Donkey Kong champion wins defamation case against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst

Summary

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”.The judgment noted multiple versions of the video were published, with the allegations removed or addressed, before Jobst issued a retraction video in July 2021, two months after the original. The first video was viewed by more than 500,000 people, including 200,000 in Australia, the court heard.Judge Ken Barlow foun...