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The Courts Classic Games (Games)

Donkey Kong Champion Wins Defamation Case Against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst (theguardian.com) 56

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: 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. William "Billy" Mitchell, an American gamer who had held world records in Donkey Kong and Pac-Man going back to 1982, as recognized by the Guinness World Records and the video game database Twin Galaxies, brought the case against Karl Jobst, seeking $400,000 in general damages and $50,000 in aggravated damages.

Jobst, who makes videos about "speed running" (finishing games as fast as possible), as well as gaming records and cheating in games, made a number of allegations against Mitchell in a 2021 YouTube video. He accused Mitchell of cheating, and "pursuing unmeritorious litigation" against others who had also accused him of cheating, the court judgment stated. The court heard Mitchell was accused in 2017 of cheating in his Donkey Kong world records by using emulation software instead of original arcade hardware. Twin Galaxies investigated the allegation, and subsequently removed Mitchell's scores and banned him from participating in its competitions. The Guinness World Records disqualified Mitchell as a holder of all his records -- in both Donkey Kong and Pac-Man -- after the Twin Galaxies decision. The judgment stated that Jobst's 2021 video also linked the December 2020 suicide of another YouTuber, Apollo Legend, to "stress arising from [his] settlement" with Mitchell, and wrongly asserted that Apollo Legend had to pay Mitchell "a large sum of money."

Donkey Kong Champion Wins Defamation Case Against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst

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  • by hadleyburg ( 823868 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @06:30PM (#65274945)

    If you haven't seen the 2007 documentary film King of Kong, I recommend watching it.
    Even if you have little interesting in the world of computer games, it's still a good film.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @06:47PM (#65274995)
    Because we have the pictures that show that the type of joystick he got his last high score on is it the kind of joystick that a regular donkey Kong cabinet has, and the joystick is absolutely critical because the arcade cabinet has a four-way joystick and if you use an 8-way joystick they're all sorts of tricks that become possible.

    We also know that the video of the other high score run done was on mame or similar emulator because it exhibited behavior that you would only get on an emulator..

    It's frustrating because these are details that to any nerd are blindingly obvious but to a jury facing a proper lawyer it would be easy to confuse them.

    This is a gross miscarriage of justice and a horrific abuse of the legal system.
    • by bjoast ( 1310293 )

      It's frustrating because these are details that to any nerd are blindingly obvious but to a jury facing a proper lawyer it would be easy to confuse them. This is a gross miscarriage of justice and a horrific abuse of the legal system.

      The suit was about Jobst having defamed Mitchell by falsely connecting a previous lawsuit to another Youtuber's suicide.

      • I don't think it's entirely impossible to draw that connection and come out ahead. There's a reason why this lawsuit took place in Australia. Mitchell needed a country with liable laws that favor the person suing.

        And let's not kid ourselves this is about silencing a critic using the legal system. Which is way too easy to do.
    • by kriston ( 7886 )

      Most people think he did cheat, but most didn't dare bring it up in official language lest they catch a lawsuit.

    • This is a gross miscarriage of justice and a horrific abuse of the legal system.

      I agree. You passing a judgement on the completely wrong case on something irrelevant is very much a gross miscarriage of justice. This suit has zero to do with cheating. Try again. RTFS first.

  • by SlashDotCanSuckMy777 ( 6182618 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @07:03PM (#65275033)

    It was all about Jobst's comments about Mitchell re Apollo - who died.

    He's still a cheater - the Judge said as much - but the defamation wasn't to do with that.

  • How much of that $350k are lawyers getting?

    • by narcc ( 412956 )

      In a just world, they'd get all of it and then some. Litigious scumbags shouldn't be rewarded for being litigious scumbags.

  • Fair or not, I'm not paying $15 for a tiny 5 oz. bottle of hot sauce from anyone.

  • Mitchell Derangement Syndrome is strong with the /. crowd.
  • Twin Galaxies changed rules and some things where judges call like on stuff like leeching

  • Jobst ran a video accusing Elon of lying about being a good quake player here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    And in the video it turns out that Jobst did, in fact, find conclusive evidence that Elon did in fact come in second place in the first professional Quake tournament. Which is all Elon ever claimed. But Jobst still claims, somehow, that Elon is lying because it was A) a small tournament, and B) Elon had a fast internet connection from working at a startup. So what? The claim checked out. The fact

    • by Qwertie ( 797303 )

      in the video it turns out that Jobst did, in fact, find conclusive evidence that Elon did in fact come in second place in the first professional Quake tournament. Which is all Elon ever claimed.

      The recent controversy about Musk wasn't about his Quake play, but yes, that video focuses mainly on the Quake angle. That's not all Elon ever claimed, though. Elon is shown in the video repeatedly saying things like:

      "I was you know maybe one of the best Quake players in the world, actually won money for what I thi

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