This month has brought us yet another example of the cluelessness those who are terminally online have about the real world. Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst had the hammer brought down against him in a defamation lawsuit brought by Donkey Kong and Pac-Man champion Billy Mitchell in the Brisbane District Court. The damages awarded are around AU$350,000 and will exceed that when interest (and whatever his own legal expenses were), are added. I know very little about law and will not be offering any analysis from this perspective, but I do have an opinion on the matter in general which will be shared below.
It is worth offering some context for all of this since I am a lot more familiar with the background to the case than I am with the Australian legal system. Billy Mitchell became well-known chiefly through the 2007 documentary The King of Kong which was a heavily dramatised look at competitive arcade gaming largely between Donkey Kong competitors Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. Mitchell is very much the villain (which he seems to take delight in playing into), in the documentary’s narrative with Wiebe being positioned as the likeable underdog the audience is supposed to cheer for. As with most documentaries, reality was much less interesting but it was and remains a genuinely entertaining film as I found having re-watched last year.
While this certainly brought Mitchell more public recognition, it was still within the niche of gaming and the average person would still have no idea who he is. The documentary also brought more people into competitive gaming and Steve Wiebe is now ranked 12th on Twin Galaxies’ Donkey Kong leaderboards and Billy Mitchell only recorded on the original leaderboards from prior to Jace Hall purchasing Twin Galaxies in 2014. This is a whole story by itself which Karl Jobst covers this in at least one of over twenty videos he has published relating to Mitchell. The short of it is that there is evidence to suggest Mitchell used the MAME arcade emulator instead of real hardware which is against the rules. This led to his records being removed before being reinstated in an archive as part of a settlement between Mitchell and Twin Galaxies. Mitchell’s image as an 80s-sports-film-villain in The King of Kong and his real-life litigiousness has made him unpopular among many in the competitive scene which has led to more and more scrutiny of his records old and new.
Karl Jobst came to public prominence when he set a new speedrun record of 0.52 on Dam (Agent), the first mission of the 1997 Nintendo 64 game GoldenEye 007. This is what originally brought him to my attention as I loved that game growing up. It also received a little bit of media attention and this led to Jobst producing videos on speedrunning; eventually branching into other aspects of competitive gaming and gaming culture. Like Mitchell, his status as a public figure is firmly within the niche of competitive video games. This focus on his channel naturally led him to covering controversies related to Mitchell and eventually directly inserting himself into this these controversies.
This ultimately led to Billy Mitchell suing Karl Jobst in September, 2021. Jobst’s audience (which includes me), was led to believe this was all related to Jobst supporting claims Mitchell had cheated at Donkey Kong. The reporting on the case however, showed that the defamation lawsuit was related to a very specific claim Jobst had made in one of his videos:
The American claimed Jobst’s video had implied Mitchell’s actions had contributed to YouTuber Benjamin Smith, who went by the screen name “Apollo Legend”, taking his own life.
Apollo Legend was another YouTuber that used to cover the Donkey Kong shenanigans but was also quite a troubled man. Mitchell’s grievance with Jobst is much more understandable in this context. That Jobst was actually being sued for claiming Billy had contributed to someone’s death and not for claiming Mitchell cheated at Donkey Kong has made many of his supporters (many of whom contributed money to his defence), angry with Jobst.
Jobst posted a response soon after on his X account:
There are a lot of lies being spread that I falsely claimed Billy sued me because I said he cheated. I never claimed this, I only claimed it was relevant as part of my defence.
I didn’t openly discuss certain details for obvious reasons but I was never trying to hide why I was being sued.
youtube.com/watch?v=1tjWUCUDVjk
In this video I fully allow Billy to explain why he was suing me. And I specifically state that I chose not to go into too much detail because it related to the ongoing lawsuit.
Furthermore I never asked for money when Billy originally sued me. It was only after he sent me a 2nd lawsuit, and a threat of a 3rd lawsuit which were completely unrelated that I needed to crowdfund.
My total legal costs are well over $600k, so any money I received went to my lawyers. I did not intentionally try to deceive anyone or trick anyone just to defraud them or scam them out of money.
But the criticism that I should have been more transparent is valid and I’m sorry. Truthfully I didn’t want to repeat or mention any claims regarding Apollo Legend because it may have jeopardized my defence.
I never intentionally lied regarding Apollo Legend either. I relied on incorrect information from multiple sources. I retracted the statements once I confirmed it was inaccurate but apparently it was not sufficient.
At some point of course I will produce a video discussing everything, and I still believe the decision today was not the correct one.
While he may never have “claimed” this, the thrust of his videos certainly suggested this was the reason. I have seen most of his coverage of Mitchell and I didn’t know from watching them what Mitchell’s complaint was. His GoFundMe raising money for the lawsuit that raised $200,000 also does not state specifically what he was being sued for. His response then is also misleading and as he has made a short career of dissecting exactly these sort of responses for truth content, it is not a surprise to see him now receiving the same treatment. His personal integrity was a big part of why he was taken seriously on the topics he covered including the more recent involving Jirard Khalil another YouTuber known as ‘The Completionist’ regarding a charity he was the public face of.
Billy Mitchell with his wife in King of Kong and Karl Jobst with his wife leaving court.
What bothers me most about this was that he didn’t make a retraction of what even to the legally untrained mind, is clearly a defamatory statement. Instead he obstinately went forward with the case and stupidly continued to make negative videos about Mitchell including one two months to the day before the verdict. This provided all the ammunition Mitchell’s lawyer needed though Jobst seemed confident to the end. This terminally online YouTuber has received a dose of reality that is potentially ruinous and I find myself feeling somewhat sorry for him.
Though I probably spend more time online than I should, I am at least in the real world enough to know that nobody cares about someone cheating to get high scores in an arcade game that was released before I was even born. Jobst and many others are so involved in these happenings that they seem to have lost touch with how normal people would see all this. Even as someone fascinated by speedrunning, I find myself disgusted with many people engaged in it. Grown men sitting around in their pyjamas playing old games over and over and then shrieking or weeping like little girls when they beat someone else’s record by a few seconds (or even less), looks nothing short of pathetic to the average adult. Yet Jobst seems to have been invested to the point where he thought Mitchell’s alleged cheating would lead the judge to overlook what was clear defamation on Jobst’s part. He even seemed to think that cheating to get a high score at Donkey Kong was already damaging to Mitchell’s image to the point that attributing responsibility for someone’s death to him was not defamatory.
It is worth also dwelling briefly on Billy Mitchell and his public persona. Even if you assume the worst about Mitchell, he is still undeniably a pioneer of the competitive gaming culture that Jobst made a name for himself in. He was in it well before the more obsessive Internet-based communities arose and whatever his faults may be, they do owe him respect for that — if nothing else. That he doesn’t much care for the monomania of modern competitors is hardly surprising. Mitchell is a husband, father and operates a successful business. I have no doubt all three of those titles are more important to him than his accomplishments in Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. With the latter, he is really more of a public performer than a competitor these days though he is also legitimately very good in his own right. Much of this seems all but forgotten by many who focus obsessively on this gaming niche today.
The really sad thing for me is that Jobst himself is also a husband and father and this foolish pursuit of Mitchell could cost not only him but those closest to him dearly. I really hope that it all ends here but indications as of writing are that he hasn’t learned his lesson and may even appeal the decision.