YouTuber Loses Lawsuit to Arcade Legend Billy Mitchell, Owes $220K+

YouTuber Karl Jobst lost the defamation case against him filed by Billy Mitchell and was ordered to pay at least $350,000 AUD ($220,000 in USD) in damages plus interest. According to court documents, the judge likened Jobst to a crusader who wants to “destroy” Mitchell.

The court hearing happened on April 1 in Queensland, and it talks about a video that implies that Mitchell was a “major contributing factor” in Apollo Legend’s suicide. The lawsuit points at a video Jobst made called “The Biggest Conmen in Video Game History Strikes Again!” There was an excerpt in this video where Jobst said that Mitchell’s lawsuit against Apollo Legend left the latter in deep debt. But due to his ongoing health problems at the time, it was all too much, and he ultimately took his own life.

The exact line has been edited out in the current version of the video that is still on YouTube.

Mitchell mentioned that Jobst’s video has led to the loss of offers for paid appearances. Jobst denies that his videos had anything to do with Mitchell losing them. He said that Mitchell already had a reputation of a cheater and that his reputation was not further harmed by the video.

There have been accusations of cheating against Billy Mitchell. In 2017, James Young investigated Mitchell’s Donkey Kong records and found out that there is a possibility that Mitchell is playing on an emulated version of Donkey Kong. Twin Galaxies only accepts Donkey Kong records played in the original arcade printed circuit boards.

In 2018, Mitchell’s records were all thrown out of the site. “After many months of researching, Twin Galaxies administration has determined the dispute made by Jeremy Young (@xelnia) to be accepted,” the announcement said. The Guinness World Records also removed Mitchell’s records as both institutions work hand-in-hand with retro video game records. Mitchell was also banned from submitting entries to Twin Galaxies.

Mitchell then filed a lawsuit in 2019 against Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records for defamation. While Guinness opted to reinstate his records, Twin Galaxies countersued Mitchell. In the court document, Twin Galaxies alleged that Walter Day, the founder of Old Twin Galaxies (to differentiate the Old and New owners of the site), conspired with Mitchell to create a persona of “The greatest video game player of all time.”

This was their plan to save the failing business of Twin Galaxies at the time. The court document said that the plan was to “return Billy Mitchell’s prestige with fraudulent scores,” and this would, in turn, generate buzz and revive interest in Twin Galaxies and the Twin Galaxies Score Database. “The problem was that Billy Mitchell lacked the requisite natural skill or ability to be the greatest video game player of all time,” the document added.

In 2024, Mitchell and Twin Galaxies settled, and Mitchell’s score was put in the historical leaderboards. However, he is still banned from Twin Galaxies competitions and his scores will not go back to the main leaderboards.

While there have been accusations of Mitchell cheating, the recent lawsuit is all about defamation and how Jobst’s videos affected his reputation. The judge saw Jobst’s videos as a crusade against Mitchell and ultimately ruled in Mitchell’s favor, calling what Jobst did a “contumelious disregard of the truth.”

The judge arrived at this conclusion after hearing that Apollo Legend’s brother had mentioned, according to the document, that the settlement between Mitchell and Apollo Legend did not require any payment.