The DUMBEST Lawsuit In Video Game History

hello you absolute legends high scores are a serious business and none take them more seriously than billy mitchell video game player of the century multiple time donkey kong world champion achiever of the first perfect pac-man and if you publicly deny any of these accolades he will sue you mitchell has a fascination with trying to use the legal system to silence those who doubt his claims which i may add are incessant the man cannot go two words without bringing up his supposed pacman and donkey kong triumphs he obviously cares deeply about extracting praise and admiration from others so much so that this obsessive need appears to be producing his downfall he is so married to the idea that he is god's gift to arcade gaming that he will threaten legal action against anyone who makes the reasonable statement that his conquests were mostly fabricated and entrenched in lies and deception mitchell attacks everyone who opposes him and i am his latest victim it seems as though mitchell didn't appreciate his cameo in my previous video which was mostly focused on guinness world records ireland bastard guinness for their shady practices and their reinstatement of records from a proven cheater otherwise known as billy mitchell mitchell was upset by this and thought it was a good idea to begin a defamation claim against me he contacted multiple lawyers in my state eventually finding one gullible enough to forward on a notice demanding that i take down the video apologize and pay him 150 000 dollars you heard correctly he is demanding 150 000 because i briefly mentioned him in a video two weeks ago as ludicrous as this demand is this video isn't even about that what we are actually going to cover is his 1 million lawsuit against twin galaxies for the crime of claiming that two of the records they had on their database were not achieved on original arcade hardware however before we move on to that i do want to address the notice mitchell sent me just to let you know how outrageous he really is this is a concerns notice this is the first step of the defamation process as outlined in the defamation act of queensland 2005. before you can take someone to court you must give them notice and provide them with an opportunity to make amends in this notice it outlines mitchell's history which is the same self-indulgent story he tells at every opportunity i won't retell it here the important part is the next section that outlines the defamatory statements and what they mean now i've seen a lot of videos and statements featuring billy mitchell and from all of my experience i truly believe mitchell to be a compulsive liar he lies constantly and everywhere even in things that don't seem to provide any advantage we will go into a lot of these lies later in the video but even this concerns notice is no different it starts out fine it identifies the video i posted called guinness world record should stay out of gaming it correctly points out that i stated that guinness world records were a scam and that it had made a terrible decision to reinstate the world records of a proven cheater it accurately outlines that identified billy mitchell as said cheeto and says that i planned on making a future video but here is where the lies start to creep in as they always do he claims that i stated that guinness decision was a slap in the face to all video gamers this is provably untrue as what i said was guinness decision to reinstate mitchell's records is a slap in the face to every gaming community that works hard to maintain records it's then falsely claims that i stated that guinness had falsified its records again at no point did i say this and the video is right there for people to scour through that doesn't even make sense as billy is the one that falsified records guinness just prints them i never made any statements alluding to guinness believing that the records were false either i just implied their decisions were based on money and that they should trust the experts it goes on to lie again saying that i stated that guinness had been sufficiently paid off by mitchell what i actually said was whether it's because they fear a lawsuit from mitchell or they were sufficiently paid off it's obvious all that matters to them is the bottom line i don't know what arrangements mitchell had with guinness which is why i posted two hypothetical reasons for their decision it is very telling when a party grossly misquotes another when the statements are right there and readily available to crosscheck the notice gets even more ridiculous though it makes the claim that the video imputed that mitchell is a proven cheater which is correct and can be demonstrably shown but it also claims that the video suggests that mitchell is a criminal i have absolutely no idea where this came from and would love to see this explained lying about a record doesn't make you a criminal nor is trying to get guinness to post your records this matter has nothing at all to do with criminality in any way and it was never even so much as hinted that it was it claims that the video imputed that mitchell bribed guinness to reinstate his records but this has two problems as per my previous point this was never stated it was only hinted at as the possible reason but even if i did state definitively that mitchell paid guinness this isn't a bribe and the entire video highlighted the fact that guinness charges exorbitant amounts of money to verify records if morons want to pay a large fee to have guinness verify their achievement that's not bribery it's just paying too much free service here is the list of mitchell's demands in order for me to avoid a lawsuit 1. the deletion of the youtube publication which was published on or about july 25th 2 your written undertaking never to repeat any of the allegations contained in the video about our client 3. a written apology to our client four payment of our clients costs which we estimate to be in the order of fifteen hundred dollars five payment of compensatory damages in the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars needless to say these supposed damages are absurd and highlight just how deluded mitchell really is i have to admit though as insane as this threat is and even though i have multiple defenses available to combat any legal action getting this notice was not pleasant having just started a new family i have more than myself to worry about but unfortunately for mitchell i am a man of principle who will never be strong-armed into backing down from an action i believe to be right i am extremely fortunate in that i have a large army of support behind me i can't imagine how scary it would be for those less fortunate though which is one of the reasons mitchell must be stopped and everything hinges on the lawsuit we are about to cover before we go on i have to give a quick shout out to this video's sponsor ridge wallets now i am extremely appreciative of ridge for supporting me throughout the craziness that's been going on this year sponsors truly do keep this channel alive ridge make amazing wallets they are compact streamlined and feel great i've always hated those huge traditional flip wallets and all i ever take with me when i leave the house is my license and a credit card so anything else is just overkill the material is really really really strong and is backed by a lifetime warranty ridge are so confident in their product they offer a 45-day money-back guarantee and you can get 10 percent off one of these bad boys today by going to ridge.com legend or clicking the link in the description william james mitchell v twin galaxies llc a 1 million lawsuit over video game high scores what a wonderful world we live in we will focus on this particular lawsuit as it has been actually served and responded to by twin galaxies but it's not the only action mitchell has taken he also has a 1 million lawsuit filed against youtuber apollo legend a 1 million lawsuit against both the owner of the donkey kong forums and also jeremy young who was the first person who originally started the dispute threat on twin galaxies mitchell also has a 10 million lawsuit against twin galaxies in a different state which has not yet been served i know almost all of you will know the backstory but just in case you don't i will very very quickly explain billy mitchell is a well-known arcade player who allegedly set high score world records in the arcade game donkey kong these records were featured on the twin galaxy scoreboard who was the largest high score keeping organization both mitchell and twin galaxies were featured heavily in the documentary the king of kong if you haven't seen this documentary i strongly recommend that you do while there are many historical inaccuracies and it omits a lot about what really happened it is a really entertaining story that definitely truthfully captures a lot of the personalities surrounding the case the contrast between the two main players steve wiebe and billy mitchell is striking and makes for a fantastic narrative in 2018 twin galaxies removed all of billy mitchell's records including those not related to donkey kong after an extensive investigation concluded that his two scores of one million forty seven thousand two hundred and one million fifty thousand two hundred were not performed on an unmodified original donkey kong arcade pcb the pcb is the circuit board that houses the game itself which outputs to the arcade monitor the first thing that we need to clear up is what the lawsuit is actually for as many people get this wrong mitchell is not suing twin galaxies for removing his high scores he would have no legal grounds to do this as twin galaxies is a private organization and can host whatever high scores it chooses it can ban whoever it wants and requires no justification at all for doing so instead this lawsuit is specifically against the statements that twin galaxies made outlining that his scores were not performed on an original donkey kong arcade mitchell claims that this statement is false and that twin galaxies is aware of its falsity and is lying or at least intentionally suppressing the truth the logic coming from the mitchell camp is as follows we have evidence that evidence proves mitchell legitimately achieved his scores twin galaxies will not accept this evidence therefore twin galaxies is suppressing the truth and is knowingly making statements with reckless disregard for their falsity the problem is that the evidence that mitchell provides is for all intents and purposes meaningless and doesn't speak to the actual issues at hand it isn't as if he doesn't provide evidence at all in fact the exhibits mitchell provides amount to a 214 page document there is a lot there to unpack but it's almost completely irrelevant to twin galaxy's rationale behind their decision the decision to ban mitchell was based on video recordings of the alleged performances recordings that can be analyzed and studied as many times as one wishes the vast majority of the evidence in support of the alleged high scores is eyewitness testimonies however eyewitness testimony carries no weight at all for a number of reasons the first reason is a simple one people can lie this is why hard data is always a better means of proving legitimacy but even in a hypothetical world where everyone always told the truth eyewitness testimony would still be absolutely meaningless the reality is that many forms of cheating simply cannot be detected with the human eye let alone on the first viewing this is obvious when it comes to something like doping in sports in 1988 millions of people watched as ben johnson won gold and set a new world record in the 100 meter final at the seoul olympics if you asked every single one of those witnesses they would have all sworn that he had indeed won the race and they wouldn't have been lying but that doesn't mean he didn't cheat two days later his gold medal was stripped and his world record time was disqualified after a blood sample returned a positive result for steroids if johnson were to then collect millions of sworn affidavits stating that he had won the race that doesn't help his case or speak to the issue at hand human eyes cannot detect doping it can only be determined by analysis after the fact using specific technology to study the data in ways the human body cannot when it comes to speed running there have been countless examples of cheating that was exposed years later but only through advanced analysis for example in super mario 64 several players that spliced together runs were caught out after the audio in their video evidence was studied in audacity and audio editing software the audio discrepancies were so minute that it is literally impossible for the human ear to detect the splices however they become obvious when technology is used in the case of mitchell it was video analysis that was the basis for the conclusion that his records weren't legitimate the way each level was loaded was not reflective of an actual arcade unit and perfectly represented what would appear if one were using emulation of course levels load so quickly that you can't tell the difference when you watch the performance it is only when going frame by frame that the smoking gun becomes apparent even if mitchell's witnesses were all completely truthful which i personally don't think is the case it has no bearing on the evidence against him they wouldn't be able to know the difference no matter how scrupulously they observed his high score when it happened the current owner of twin galaxy's jace hall is well aware of this fact which is why he was not interested in hearing eyewitness testimonies there are numerous times in mitchell's suit where he points out that hull did not want to accept eyewitness accounts mitchell attempts to paint this as intentional suppression of facts but when you have the actual video witnesses are no longer useful to give you an idea about how ignorant mitchell is of this basic logic i'll read a portion of his legal argument to its claim that mitchell cheated twin galaxies at trial will have to impeach each and every witness that swore under oath that they saw mitchell achieve the scores to date twin galaxies has shown no indication that it will be able to do so in fact twin galaxies has not contacted any of the witnesses and its motion does not attempt to discredit those witnesses testimony thus twin galaxy's case essentially rests on a conspiracy nearly as broad and untenable as the kennedy assassination scores of people around the country with seemingly no connection to each other have agreed to lie and fabricate evidence that mitchell achieved his records on arcade software the cheating claim is ludicrous in mitchell's universe no one can ever be fooled people can detect any and all forms of cheating without the use of technology or without the need for further analysis they can do this simply by being in proximity and they don't even need to be experts on the game at hand the amazing thing though is that his score of one million forty seven thousand two hundred the score featured on king of kong the score that earned him the guinness world record for the first million point score has zero witnesses not a single one when you weed out the human element in his case what you're left with are conspiracy theories and deceptive technical explanations that are either lies or ignorant to the point of hilarity mitchell attempts to argue against the video evidence in two ways the first is by claiming that the videos aren't his actual performance the second is claiming that the video performances aren't emulation but are in fact produced by an original donkey kong board in order to appreciate the absurdity of the claim that the videos aren't in fact of billy mitchell we have to understand how we know that they are in fact his tapes mitchell does confirm that he provided tapes of his scores to twin galaxies this is stated in exhibit 20 of his lawsuit interestingly though when his lawyer first contacted twin galaxies requesting they retract their statements he provided an evidence package expressly stating that he never submitted videotapes of his scores but he eventually had to ditch that argument when the evidence started stacking up there was even posters that twin galaxies made at the time promoting his world record saying that it was verified through videotape walter day the previous owner of twin galaxies sent copies of mitchell's submission of his 1 million 47 000 score to various referees to examine it when the score was eventually disputed twin galaxies contacted multiple ex-referees to ask four copies of the performance one copy came from dwayne richards who has been publicly outspoken against mitchell mitchell claims that richards must have edited the videotape in order to frame him he actually wants you to believe that dwayne richards perfectly edited the transition screen for each level to make it look like it was performed on maim this ends up being a pretty funny claim though even when you don't consider how ludicrous the technical feat would have been dwayne richards wasn't the only source of the taped performance that twin galaxies got a hold of it also got hold of a copy from richie knuckles who was actually one of mitchell's friends he sent the footage to jace in order to clear mitchell's name believing him to be innocent and knowing that he did in fact have a copy of the original submission needless to say both copies from the two different sources matched up perfectly but not only did they match each other they also matched other footage as well in the king of kong documentary billy's score was played on a tv at fun spot the gameplay footage shown is exactly the same as the two sourced copies however billy's lawsuit claims that because the footage shown in the documentary didn't show any transition screens you can't confirm those weren't edited later well luckily we have more footage this time from 2006 before the king of kong was even released in an interview with mtv the head referee for twin galaxies at the time robert mercek played footage from a copy of the performance that billy had sent him not only does this footage match all of the copies obtained for the investigation and the footage shown in the king of kong but it also shows a transition screen which perfectly matches what you would see if you were using emulation but billy mitchell still claims the footage on the tape is not him this is bill mitchell the world's greatest donkey kong player at one million and forty four thousand one hundred and he is in screen 116 and his score is now going to be a million 47 200 when the bonus is added and at this point you're going to see the kill screen in donkey kong the game has an absolute conclusion level 22-1 notice the timers back to 4 000 points it started at 4 000 and mario who's over here is going to die any second the timer only went down by 300 points that's the kill screen the most you could possibly do in this game is get from here up to about that ladder before you die no one can get past this point so billy not only has he gotten to this point he did so on his third life so um he could have made some extra points by intentionally killing himself off earlier and squeaking out a few extra points in the other board here's the initial phase but he didn't choose to do so and he still has the world's record of a million and 47. and there's his uh ever-present usa log on and there you have it the world's record on donkey kong right before your eyes okay so billy wants you to believe the footage everyone sees isn't him but he also wants you to know that even if it were him it's still legitimate footage that could have come from an original donkey kong pcb mitchell and numerous technical experts spent a huge amount of time researching ways a standard arcade board could produce the images seen on the tape unfortunately he was not able to do so and still hasn't provided any technical explanation as to how to produce the same transition screen images that were present in his performances the important thing to understand is that it was never the goal of twin galaxies to determine precisely what method mitchell used to create these tapes the only relevant question is whether or not what we can see can be replicated using an original donkey kong board and the answer is no mitchell cannot explain how these images happened the way that they did but he does try to debunk a couple of issues that were ironed out during the investigation one of them is the so-called girder finger this is a small part of the girder that hasn't been fully drawn during the transition screen on emulator this doesn't appear during transition screens on an actual arcade as they render completely differently a critical thing to realize though is that this girder finger is not the problem with billy's tapes the problem is the entire transition screen everything about it renders in a different way ignoring everything else and focusing on this girder finger alone a tiny portion of a single frame of footage isn't relevant in any case during the investigation it was uncovered that this girder finger was not appearing on transition screens using the versions of maim that were available in 2004. keep in mind that everything else matched the videotapes and was still different to arcade but mitchell's team jumped on this one discrepancy and claimed that it exonerated him it was quickly realized though that the girder finger only fails to draw using the default settings of the emulator if the refresh rate is changed from 60 hertz to 60.6 hertz which is the actual refresh rate of donkey kong the finger appears in the official dispute thread where's copeland one of the greatest donkey kong players of all time stated by enabling cheats and setting the refresh rate to 60.6 frames per second the arcade machine's rate instead of maim's default 60 fps the girder tail draws every time according to mitchell copeland is lying about the refresh rate of donkey kong and is using an arbitrary setting to try to force the girder finger to appear this is quite a damning claim but it seems to conflict with all available evidence in the arcade gaming world it is pretty well known that donkey kong does in fact run at 60.6 hertz there are numerous forum posts many taking place years before this entire debacle stating that the game runs at 60.6 for example a post from 2009 reads ever since i upgraded to maim version 132 i have noticed a lot of sound starters in games that never had them before donkey kong and star wars are definite defenders you rebel scum replied one of two issues could be your cause a you're running at 60 hertz and the game ran at faster and after 0.106 maim's sound was more affected by the screen's refresh rate both donkey kong and star wars run at 60.6 hertz in 2013 one forum user posted a topic titled success with mame and custom refresh rates no tearing they stated i just wanted to write about my maim setup that works without screen tearing and hopefully minimal lag for some games in the post he outlines the games he uses and their refresh rates donkey kong is listed as 60.6 hertz it is almost universally known among retro gamers that running a game at a different frame rate than what was intended can cause issues this is why when using emulation you often need to know the exact technical specifications of the game to run it properly but let's not trust random arcade experts on the internet the official 1981 manual that came with the machine gives us the exact schematics of the pcb now granted you may need to be an electrical engineer to understand what these images mean but i've asked numerous experts who all confirmed that based on what's provided in the official documentation we can calculate the refresh rate to be 60.6 hertz but again let's not trust experts and the official documentation we can literally measure the output of a donkey kong arcade board using an oscilloscope to get the exact refresh rate spoiler alert it is in fact 60.6 hertz billy mitchell claims the refresh rate is not 60.6 hertz but rather 60 hertz and his evidence for this is amazing he provides the specifications for the monitor used in donkey kong arcade cabinets the sanyo easy 20. he doesn't understand the difference between the scan rate on a monitor and the vertical refresh rate created by the game itself this is a pretty epic blunder to be included in a legal document we already know that mitchell has a team of technical experts working around the clock to find ways to justify his footage so i can't believe this is a simple mistake i'd guess as with everything else this is intentional deception in their evidence exhibits they also include a frame from a video appearing to show a girder finger their argument is that this frame proves that the girder finger can occur on an original arcade but this frame isn't from a transition screen which are the issue with billy's tapes this frame is from the game's loading screen before the gameplay even begins if the tapes aren't from mitchell why is he trying so desperately to prove that the footage could have been produced on an original arcade he has always stated that the tapes weren't his so why does he focus on the footage at all it makes no logical sense billy has even already admitted that the footage is maim and the fact of the matter is everybody is looking at the film and everybody is questioning the fact was it arcade or was it maine what is mame exactly for those who may not know okay i've never even played maim i don't have main loaded in my home but basically maim is an emulation of what is in the arcade that's right it's just not the arcade therefore it's a different platform there are main world records there is donkey kong main world records okay and the film footage that he has that jeremy has shows mame play now i contend that if he gets the original tape or he gets the original room shot he will see that what i say is true i'm not disputing what he says what i'm disputing is the fact that i want him to have the original tape okay this video has already gone on pretty long and honestly we've addressed most of what mitchell's evidence has to offer as i previously mentioned most of his arguments relies on unreliable witness testimony and the technical aspects of his case are at best ignorant and at worst deceptive and slanderous he also complains heavily that people don't like him this is an attempt to show malice and create doubt that any evidence they bring forth is legitimate one thing i've noticed about narcissists is that they always find excuses for why people don't like them it is never because of their actions they will claim it's because people want to dislike them because they have already made up their mind and nothing will ever change that mitchell claims that twin galaxies weren't interested in being shown the truth and were always against mitchell but the reality is that twin galaxies spent an insane amount of time and energy trying to help mitchell validate his footage they bought recording equipment did extensive testing on actual hardware and even extended the length of the investigation because mitchell requested it it took more than seven months for a verdict to be made and the entire time everyone was waiting for mitchell to submit evidence that shows why his footage looks the way that it does but the evidence never came as someone who was involved in the speed running community i can tell you that our perception of the investigation was completely different to what mitchell is asserting speedrunners were furious and shocked at how long this investigation went on given the fact that clear evidence had been given in both of the todd rogers and billy mitchell disputes many people declared that twin galaxy's owner jace hall was being intentionally aloof and combative at the end of the day i believe this all came down to impatience people wanted billy gorn as soon as the evidence came out and they probably weren't wrong but twin galaxies wanted to give him time to defend himself it's just that he never did i know twin galaxies has a pretty messed up past but we really need to support them now the twin galaxies of today is not the same as it once was i have spoken to jace hall a few times and he definitely seems like he does care about gaming and wants to celebrate the highest levels of achievement their removal of the old guard and players like todd rogers and billy mitchell just go to show that they now do actually value integrity it really does seem like a different place and this is coming from someone who has made entire videos about how corrupt it was but possibly more importantly is that twin galaxies is fighting the fight for every gaming community that values being able to find and weed out cheaters if twin galaxies loses it would be an incredibly damaging precedent to set mitchell would go on to serve all of his currently filed lawsuits and you better believe he would file more defeating mitchell would benefit everyone and losing would be disastrous now is the time to come together thank you so much for watching you legends i hope you are having a fantastic day and i will see you in the next video you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 1,425,977

Rating: 4.9454703 out of 5

Keywords: guinness world records, guinness gamer's edition, billy mitchell, karl jobst, guinness, video game cheating, biggest cheater, donkey kong, king of kong, steve weibe, twin galaxies, jace hall, arcade high scores, billy mitchell cheater, billy mitchell cheat, video game cheat, high scores cheat

Id: DNSJX1a2weo

Length: 28min 3sec (1683 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/vagina_candle]

I'm so sick of hearing about this irrelevant pathetic narcissist.

[u/Dacvak]

Another great video.

Question: if I wanted to catch someone up on basically all of this drama and the history of it, what do you all think the best option would be? I figure starting with King of Kong. But beyond that, what would be the must-see videos? Has anyone put together a playlist or anything?

[u/ThriftshopGamer]

Legitimate question, is Billy Mitchell rich? Can he cover everything that's going on?

[u/JouleS88]

/u/karl-jobst just want to congratulate you on the video and to wish you luck on the probable upcoming lawsuit.

I had a nightmare where you started your video with "Hello you absolute Raid: Shadow Legends".

[u/GISP]

Countersue for slap, and have him labeled as a vexatious litigatant and perhaps his lawyer for malicious prosecution?

[u/Chris_Nash]

Billy Mitchell is such a lying scheming chode bitch

[u/Azurillkirby]

Is it dumber than the time an indie dev sued a video game pundit for 15 million dollars because said pundit frequently said their bad games were bad?

[u/ProfessorBonesZ]

Billy Mitchell sues this subreddit when?

[u/trickman01]

I don't know. Jack Thompson had some pretty dumb lawsuits back in the day. So much so that he had his bar card revoked.