Donkey Kong champion wins defamation case against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/01/donkey-kong-champion-billy-mitchell-wins-defamation-case-australia-youtuber-karl-jobst-ntwnfb

by throw7 • 1 year ago

87 73 1 year ago

theguardian.com

ShrimpHawk• 1 year ago

Billy Mitchell wins more in court than video games. Maybe he should have picked a different career growing up.

robocat• 1 year ago

Or it shows that court is just a different type of game, and that he's good at games.

Although the judge saying he should have asked for more than $50k shows that maybe the grinding/stubbornness matters more for winning than the points.

anotherhue• 1 year ago

How does he finance all these lawsuits?

jhbadger• 1 year ago

His hot sauce sales? (as shown in The King of Kong)

JohnBooty• 1 year ago

Per Wikipedia:

"Mitchell's family owns the Rickey's restaurants in Hollywood, Florida, and Pembroke Pines, Florida, and he sells Rickey's World Famous Hot Sauce"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell_(gamer)

PokemonNoGo• 1 year ago

World famous ey? Wonder which world...

sowbug2• 1 year ago

The movie The King of Kong is a good intro to the sordid side of the world of competitive arcade gaming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Kong

mwidell• 1 year ago

This is one of the greatest documentaries I have ever seen. The story is so intriguing, interesting and entertaining. Highly recommend.

alt2277• 1 year ago

Make sure to follow up with the much lesser known Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade

It covers a lot of the same material but gives a much wider context about that whole retro gaming scene which is shown in King of Kong

jxjnskkzxxhx2• 1 year ago

There's another with the same vibe for Tetris. I believe it's called fistful of quarters. Not nearly as good, but great soundtrack.

BeetleB• 1 year ago

It's actually the example I give on why one should not watch documentaries. It's extremely misleading (without actually lying):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24944741

(I mean yes, Billy is a jerk for sure, but the documentary was way out of line).

snickerbockers• 1 year ago

it needs a sequel to cover the last 7 years.

sowbug2• 1 year ago

ryandrake• 1 year ago

A professional video game player, a professional YouTube person and a $400K lawsuit? It hurts my brain realizing that these people have so much money at stake. Why the hell did I get two degrees and grind actual employment making actual things for 25 years?

ge962• 1 year ago

You gotta have "it" (Epic Faith No More) to have millions of people tune into you on YT. I make technical videos but I'm not a Michael Reeves for ex.

edit: I will say though, you don't have to make those ADHD type videos with screaming and quick cuts. There are other technical youtubers that are slower like Applied Science, Great Scott, 3 blue 1 brown, etc...

Suppafly6• 1 year ago

edit: I will say though, you don't have to make those ADHD type videos with screaming and quick cuts. There are other technical youtubers that are slower like Applied Science, Great Scott, 3 blue 1 brown, etc...

This, you can make make good content and people will watch it. What a lot of aspiring youtubers don't realize is that good production (sound, lighting, animation, video quality in general, etc.) goes a long ways towards helping people find your content engaging. Luck is necessary too, but most of the big youtubers work a lot harder than those of us working normal 9-5s.

amelius2• 1 year ago

You gotta have "it"

I wouldn't be surprised if the "it" part can be generated by some llm.

tmtvl2• 1 year ago

For every professional YouTube person and professional video game player there are thousands upon thousands of aspirants who don't get lucky and who can't support themselves that way. It's like game development: Notch got lucky and made it big, thousands of indie studios either just eke out a living (like Jeff Vogel's Spiderweb Software), or don't even manage that.

moregrist• 1 year ago

You’re spot on about the chances in a hit-based industry.

That said, Jeff Vogel has spoken at length [0] about how he’s stayed in business for 30-ish years with a middle class lifestyle. Including the lean times.

I think it’s pretty inspirational that there’s a way to make game development work if your primary goal isn’t getting rich, but to have a comfortable life and enjoy what you do.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs

amelius2• 1 year ago

The main reason is probably that you're totally OK with what you make.

Suppafly6• 1 year ago

Why the hell did I get two degrees and grind actual employment making actual things for 25 years?

Likely because you didn't dedicate yourself to learning video production and weren't good enough at playing video games to sell yourself as some sort of professional video game promoter. I'm not sure why you think either of these guys work any less hard than you do.

tourmalinetaco3• 1 year ago

They may work hard, but it‘s hardly productive. I mean Jobst just self-immolated like 3yrs of his income, meaning if it sticks he‘ll likely be paying for at least a decade, and I‘m not sure Billy has produced anything of value aside from the occasional drama.

nadermx• 1 year ago

Because perhaps you chose the "safer" route of trying to get a job instead of choosing the more risky route of any sort of building something(s) and selling it, be it a product, skill or yourself.

brcmthrowaway• 1 year ago

Work in AI, you will finally be paid more

globular-toast• 1 year ago

Presumably because your parents didn't own a restaurant business.

Suppafly6• 1 year ago

Presumably because your parents didn't own a restaurant business.

Honestly that's kinda the impressive part, most restaurant businesses fail and those that don't usually aren't even that successful.

tmtvl2• 1 year ago

Odd that this shows up on HN now, when I just started watching Karl's videos this past winter. It's a small internet.

Anyhow, I wonder how much the degraded components would affect Donkey Kong and whether similar degradation could account for Todd Roger's record for Dragster.

I also hope that other people Karl has called out aren't gonna go after him now, because with the financial loss and emotional grievance he's gonna be dealing with it would be hard to fend off additional lawsuits.

alt2277• 1 year ago

He has posted so many cocky videos about how Billy has no chance of winning the lawsuit.

Im really looking forward to his post court update video.

shadefinale• 1 year ago

In the dragster case, we don't have anything like video proof of the supposed record.

There was an effort to examine the source code of the game and determine a theoretical best time which has been matched but not exceeded.

To explain Todd's record would require some alternative way of having such a score such as proving he played on a prototype/alternate version of the game at the time he claimed to have set his record.

Do note that this case has 0% to do with cheating in video games. The judge listed 5 'imputations' made by Karl which seem to be the main points/infractions and cheating, donkey kong, etc do not appear there.

The scope of the judgement is related to Karl's statements about Billy's interactions with Apollo that ended up to be untrue.

eviks• 1 year ago

He accused Mitchell of cheating, and “pursuing unmeritorious litigation” against others who had also accused him of cheating, the court judgment stated.

Case in point!

CSMastermind• 1 year ago

This is surprising to me. Karl's commentary seemed like it would be protected speech, at least in the United States. I'm unfamiliar with Australian law though.

AdmiralAsshat• 1 year ago

Libel is a much harder threshold to meet in the US, but if one could prove that Jobst falsely claimed that Mitchell "expressed glee when he heard that Apollo Legend had committed suicide" and that he knew it was false, you might be able to successfully sue in the US, as well, for the reputational damage.

bryan0• 1 year ago

Judge agreed that Mitchell had expressed joy.

Barlow found Mitchell did have an existing reputation as a cheat and for suing people who alleged he was a cheat, and found that Mitchell had expressed joy when he believed – incorrectly – on an earlier occasion that Apollo Legend may have died.

InsideOutSanta• 1 year ago

"Barlow found Mitchell did have an existing reputation as a cheat and for suing people who alleged he was a cheat, and found that Mitchell had expressed joy when he believed – incorrectly – on an earlier occasion that Apollo Legend may have died. But Barlow found Jobst had severely damaged Mitchell’s reputation and caused distress."

Honestly, this judgment makes no sense to me. Mitchell was an absolute joke before Jobst's video and is still an absolute joke today. There is no way Jobst "further damaged" Mitchell's reputation.

alt2277• 1 year ago

He was known as a dick and a cheat before, Jobst went a step too far and inferred that he was responsible for somebodies death. That is a lot worse reputation than a cheater at video games and a serial lier.

schlauerfox• 1 year ago

I met Billy Mitchell briefly in 2015 at the now defunct Museum of Pinball in Banning, CA. He was promoting the world record for most people playing pinball simultaneously we participated in. I asked him about his depiction in the documentary and he replied something like "it's all true" with a lot of smirk and theatrical swagger. I got the impression he was a ruthless self promoter in all things he does, with his sauce business and his public ego and all the theater around the videogame records and most of what he was doing was all kayfabe as a heel, to use a wrestling term. Later he handed off a high level game of Ms. Pacman he was playing to me in good fun. He really is very good at the games. (I didn't last long). People are complicated.

Suppafly6• 1 year ago

There is no way Jobst "further damaged" Mitchell's reputation.

There should be a legal class of people where it's acknowledged that nothing you say about them damages their reputation any worse than it already is.

tveita• 1 year ago

The US has the "libel-proof plaintiff".

https://www.haynesboone.com/news/publications/the-libel-proo...

frenchtoast8• 1 year ago

From what I understand, the judge ruled that it wasn't defamation for Jobst to call Mitchell a cheater but saying he drove Apollo Legend to suicide was too far considering he didn't have a lot of reason to believe this: it was mostly based on online rumors about an apparent out of court financial settlement between Apollo and Mitchell which never existed. What probably drove the nail in the coffin is that Jobst did edit the video later to remove the claim, but after Mitchell sent legal action, he republished the original video. This might have felt vindictive to the judge. Now, Jobst did eventually ask Apollo's family for the facts, remove the claim and publish a retraction about a month later, but perhaps the judge thought this was too little too late.

I don't agree that Mitchell's reputation was harmed as he brought attention to the video multiple times, but it's hard to argue against the facts: Jobst said something he wasn't sure was true, and when he learned it was false he kept it up anyway.

Edit: fixed timeline, which is documented here: https://perfectpacman.com/2024/09/20/karl-day-4/

Suppafly6• 1 year ago

I don't agree that Mitchell's reputation was harmed

Agreed, but only because his reputation is so bad, that pretty much any slander wouldn't make it worse.

alt2277• 1 year ago

As I said in my post below, Jobst went a step too far and inferred that he was responsible for somebodies death. That is a lot worse reputation than a cheater at video games and a serial lier.

ndiddy2• 1 year ago

AFAIK the entire lawsuit was about Jobst falsely accusing Mitchell of driving Apollo Legend to suicide and then not properly retracting it (Jobst buried the retraction at the end of an unrelated 30 minute video). The reason why Mitchell's cheating was brought up in the trial was that Jobst's side were attempting to say that all reputational harm Mitchell suffered during that period was caused by cheating accusations, not Jobst's suicide accusations (as if being accused of cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide). Mitchell was able to prove this was false by producing emails from events that specifically said that they weren't hiring him due to Jobst's suicide accusations.

Additionally, Jobst kept making videos berating Mitchell during the course of the trial, which seems to have pissed off the judge. From the decision: "Mr Jobst’s attitude seems to me to have been one of, “Well, if I’m going to be sued, I may as well go for broke and damn the consequences.” Far from being evidence of his bona fides, I consider his conduct to be reckless and to show no regard for the truth or for the effect of his video on Mr Mitchell and his reputation."

Dylan16807• 1 year ago

Jobst's side were attempting to say that all reputational harm Mitchell suffered during that period was caused by cheating accusations

The cheating and the other lies and the rampant lawsuits. I agree with that causing almost all the damage. I hadn't even heard of the particular badly substantiated piece among the real stuff.

(as if being accused of cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide)

...no, not as if that. That is not part of the argument.

kodt• 1 year ago

Interesting that Mitchell won his case against Twin Galaxies. It sounded like the expert testimony supporting his claim that the video defects could occur from a "malfunctioning cabinet" was not believed by anyone knowledgeable in the Donkey Kong/and MAME community but seemingly was believed by the judge?

alt2277• 1 year ago

He didnt win, they settled out of court.

https://www.ign.com/articles/billy-mitchells-donkey-kong-rec...

By all accounts it would have been a very interesting trial had it actually gone ahead.

noboostforyou• 1 year ago

and when he learned it was false he kept it up anyway.

That fact alone loses him this case. Re-uploading a video you yourself had edited/removed makes it all but impossible to claim you didn't know.

gagabity• 1 year ago

His records have all been reinstated both by Twin Galaxies and Guinness Worls Records for whatever that's worth.

endemic• 1 year ago

Not much

alt2277• 1 year ago

Twin Galaxis purposely created a seperate 'legacy' leader board to put his scores on, so that they were able to give him back his scores as part of a settlement without actually reinstating his score on to the proper leaderboards.

mrandish• 1 year ago

for whatever that's worth.

Very little because it's clear Mitchell aggressively sued and/or threatened to sue both Twin Galaxies and Guinness to an egregious extent and the reinstatements were minimal, reluctant and only done to finally get him to stop the constant legal harassment.

Frame by frame analysis by multiple independent experts of the videotape of Mitchell's Donkey Kong record clearly shows he cheated. I don't think anyone (who isn't Mitchell, his lawyers or few friends) has any doubt Mitchell cheated and has repeatedly lied about it.

mattas• 1 year ago

A point of clarification: the defamation case wasn't about Karl Jobst accusing Billy Mitchell of cheating. It was about Jobst claiming that Mitchell was responsible for Apollo Legend's suicide.

red-iron-pine• 1 year ago

wow everyone in this story sounds like a piece of shit

bArray• 1 year ago

Unfortunately it is not an April Fool's joke, but it should be.

Donkey Kong champion wins defamation case against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst

The title sounds as if he is still recognised as a Donkey Kong Champion, where clearly in the first sentence:

A professional YouTuber in Queensland has been ordered to pay $350,000 plus interest and costs to the former world record score holder for Donkey Kong, after the Brisbane district court found the YouTuber had defamed him “recklessly” with false claims of a link between a lawsuit and another YouTuber’s suicide.

They describe him as a former world record score holder, but don't go as far as to state that it was revoked based on allegations of him cheating.

I don't think that Karl did $350k+ worth of damages to Billy, to be honest I wasn't really aware of the suicide allegation anyway.

alt2277• 1 year ago

it was revoked based on allegations of him cheating

Twin galaxies settled out of courst and reinstated his scores, albeit on a newly created 'legacy record database' instead of the actual leaderboards.

So officially he was a world record holder at some time in the past, although everybody and their dog knows he cheated.

kgwxd• 1 year ago

It’s disgusting how much the justice system rewards terrible people. Another conman gets his pay day, and I’m sure the judge got one too.

0dayz2• 1 year ago

Sorry but in this case it was Jobst fuck up of either not having the evidence of the allegation or him incriminating himself with how he acted.

tourmalinetaco3• 1 year ago

It’s conman vs conman, Karl is a liar who tried to profit off of a suicide. Ironically, as bad of a person Billy is, Karl is actually far worse, given both his pickup artist past and this lawsuit.

Donkey Kong champion wins defamation case against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst

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