3d ago

Donkey Kong champion wins defamation case against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst

www.theguardian.com

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 recognised 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”.

Going bankrupt for the integrity of donkey kong scores of the guy from regular show

13 comments

From the judgment:
It became apparent to me during the trial that many members of the online gaming and YouTube “communities” are not people whom the majority of society would consider to be “reasonable”, at least in their manners of expression and their willingness to insult, belittle and verbally attack other people in online forums (usually anonymously).
Lmao
- 🎯
  nailed 'em

I vaguely followed this like third-hand from the sloptuber churn. IIRC the entire time this guy was posturing the case to be spurious litigation against a well-entrenched cheating accusation, but it turns out it's that he accused the man of causing another YouTuber's suicide in a video because he saw a reddit comment about it???
it was always framed about the cheating scandal and nothing else. he crowdfunded for his legal funds with that premise
or just
at this point

Apparently the dude also has ties to Neo-Nazis and used to be a pick-up artist. He gave me kinda chuddy vibes from the few videos of his that I did click on
- Which dude?
  
  Jobst. The GoldenEye speedrunning community back in the day was like all Nazis and Jobst used to run approachhernow(dot)com, its still up on wayback and I saw some of his pickup artist videos floating around.

Dunno who jobs is but checking out the videos on his channel should make anyone want to see him suffer

Jobst is a weird guy with some probably dark past, yeah. Mitchell weaponizes the legal system and is a cheater undoubtedly, and is worse than Jobst in every way you can probably think of too but isn't as public.

I think it's pretty amazing seeing everyone's reactions to this going from shock, to realizing that he was lying the entire time about the reason of the lawsuit, to then turning on him and seeing it all as one giant con. Mitchell is shit, but Jobst ended up rubbing me the wrong way after a while without knowing anything else about him based on how much he wouldn't shut up about Billy Mitchell.

My bideo gmae record!