Ask HN: Are MiniMax Models Scams?

I kept trying to use their M2.5 model and now they released M2.7, but they are TERRIBLE.

See this comparison I made:

https://aibenchy.com/compare/minimax-minimax-m2-7-medium/minimax-minimax-m2-5-medium/z-ai-glm-5-medium/google-gemini-3-1-flash-lite-preview-medium/

Not only that, but M2.5 is #1 on OpenRouter, which is crazy: https://openrouter.ai/rankings

I think the only reason why it is #1 is because it is a scam. In the comparison you can see it had over 200k reasoning tokens, whereas most models have 20k-50k. Because OpenRouter ranks models based on usage, it does make sense M2.5 is on top, if it simply wastes tokens.

Did anyone actually use a MiniMax model and it actually worked? Are they simply benchmaxxed?

Is there a deeper conspiracy theory at play, or how can they keep releasing poor-performing models but people keep using then?