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/
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."
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.
> Mr Mitchell said that John Weeks was the organiser of an auction of the world’s largest collection of pinball and arcade gaming machines. Mr Mitchell had an agreement with him to host the auction for a fee of $50,000. After the publication of the video, Mr Weeks cancelled the agreement, apparently because of the negativity surrounding Mr Mitchell as a result of the video. Mr Mitchell later received an email from Mr Weeks confirming that cancellation, in which he said:
> "As per our previous conversation, I apologize for our decision to withdraw our agreement with you to host you at our auction due to the allegations from Karl Jobst that you played a significant role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life. We made the decision strictly for business reasons and I do not feel personal discontent with you, but the negativity brought by the claims presented too large a risk to us strictly from a business perspective."
> Mr Mitchell recalled that another person, Ryan Burger, who had booked him for three separate events, cancelled all three and has not since booked him to appear at any events. Mr Burger also sent him an email cancelling the third event, saying:
> "Due to the toxicity and negativity brought by Karl Jobst’s claim that you played a role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life, Old School Gamer Magazine feels compelled to withdraw its $5,000 per weekend paid appearance offer also for the Midwest Gaming Classic. I had hoped that this would have faded by now so we didn’t have to cancel this event similar to Des Moines Gaming Classic and Planet Comicon appearances that we had withdrawn earlier this summer, but I think it’s best that we allow some time to pass given the current climate."
> Whether or not the reasons given in those emails were true, the withdrawal of the offers demonstrated a harmful effect of the video on Mr Mitchell’s reputation and the receipt of the emails affected Mr Mitchell’s personal reactions to the video.
Jobst's team argued that the suicide accusation didn't cause any damage because Mitchell's already poor reputation and the other claims he made in the video meant that it couldn't be harmed further. The judge pointed out in his decision that the cheating allegations and the suicide allegations impacted different "sectors" of Mitchell's reputation and that "In seeking to prove that the plaintiff already had a bad reputation (whether as a defence to an allegation of harm to reputation or because of substantially true contextual imputations), the allegedly bad reputation must be relevant to that “sector” of the plaintiff’s reputation that is, or may be, harmed by the imputations proved by the plaintiff." You're right that Jobst's team didn't literally argue that cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide.
Mr Mitchell still was invited to the auction and attended it [1].
Ryan Burger seems to have never invited Mitchel to any events at all [2] prior to the video and yet shortly before the video was posted he invited him 3 times and canceled all of them?
These guys seem to be people that Mitchell has been friends with for very long times so it seems more reasonable to me they'd help him out with an email or two when it's literally at no cost to them. Where's an email from some Stock Brokers convention reneging on an appearance deal or a merchandise supplier asking him to find a new supplier?
That said, IIUC Australian is not as loose as the US is when making verbal claims about other people so claiming "Billy caused Apollo to kill himself" is a much weaker claim to make then "Billy is happy Apollo killed himself".
[1]: https://www.desertsun.com/story/life/2021/09/24/museum-pinba...
[2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=Ryan+Burger+Billy+Mitchell
It's disappointing to Jobst credibility, especially since I remember Jobst hyping up/bragging about the court case as an easy slam dunk for Jobst.
Agreed, but only because his reputation is so bad, that pretty much any slander wouldn't make it worse.
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.
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.
Well, the silver lining for Jobst in all of this is that he did build his YouTube channel (partly) on ranting about Billy, and that might be worth more than what he paid here.
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.
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.
https://www.haynesboone.com/news/publications/the-libel-proo...
> 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.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24944741
(I mean yes, Billy is a jerk for sure, but the documentary was way out of line).
Billy to my mind is a bit annoying but he’s a mild “villain” in the documentary. I mean it’s video game high scores and very compulsive people..
I should watch it again.
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wouldn't be surprised if the "it" part can be generated by some llm.
But there are successful channels like Neural Viz though I think that still takes script writing
Honestly that's kinda the impressive part, most restaurant businesses fail and those that don't usually aren't even that successful.
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.
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.
Im really looking forward to his post court update video.
Case in point!
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.
"Mitchell's family owns the Rickey's restaurants in Hollywood, Florida, and Pembroke Pines, Florida, and he sells Rickey's World Famous Hot Sauce"