Billy Mitchell vs. Karl Jobst
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About
Billy Mitchell vs. Karl Jobst refers to a defamation lawsuit filed against YouTuber and speedrunning historian Karl Jobst by the controversial Donkey Kong player Billy Mitchell over Karl's claims that Billy Mitchell was responsible for YouTuber's Apollo Legend's suicide and his reporting of alleged inconsistencies in Billy's Donkey Kong scores. As a direct result of Karl Jobst's claims, Mitchell has sued Jobst in two separate instances.
On April 1st, 2025, court found Jobst guilty of defamation, ordering him to pay nearly AUD 400,000 to Mitchell, as well as cover his legal expenses. At that time, the fact that the lawsuit was primarily focused on Jobst's claim that Mitchell was responsible for Apollo Legend suicide and not his reporting about Mitchell's reputation as a gamer became public information, which resulted in a backlash against Jobst for supposedly obscuring the true nature of the lawsuit.
Background
On July 23rd, 2020, Karl Jobst uploaded a YouTube video on his channel titled "Guinness World Records Should Stay Out Of Gaming"[1] in which he briefly went over the history of the company's involvement with video games (notably in publishing high scores from the earlier days of arcade gaming) and its current role in gaming records — most notably with them confirming Billy Mitchell's scores in Donkey Kong despite alleged evidence existing that Jobst suggests questions the legitimacy of Mitchell's scores (shown below). The video from Jobst, since removed, earned over 1 million views in two years.
Karl Jobst would then go on to upload three more videos going over Billy Mitchell's history of suing YouTubers and the company Twin Galaxies, who originally bestowed and then revoked Billy's title as the best in Donkey Kong, culminating in a final video about his case being dismissed by a judge that was uploaded on August 21st, 2021. During that video, titled "Billy Mitchell Gets DESTROYED By Judge,"[2] it is revealed that Mitchell's legal team has threatened Jobst with a lawsuit for his previous allegations of cheating, however Notch notably agreed and began to cover legal fees for Jobst around this time (shown below).
Jobst's Apollo Legend Claim
On May 26th, 2021, Karl Jobst posted a video titled "The Biggest Conmen In Video Game History Strike Again!" which accumulated over 1.3 million views on YouTube[7] in four years (redacted version shown below). In the original version video (quote shown below), Jobst insinuated that Billy Mitchell's lawsuit against late YouTuber Apollo Legend, for which he settled, was one of the reasons for his suicide. Karl Jobst edited the video to remove the words in question on June 4th, 2021, after Billy Mitchell recorded[3][8][9] a response video in which he denied the accusations and asserted that Jobst had effectively accused him of murder.
I haven’t spoken about this publicly but this lawsuit ultimately ended with Apollo giving in and settling with Mitchell. He was forced to remove all his videos about Mitchell’s cheating and paid him a large sum of money. This left him deeply in debt, which required him to find extra work, but with his ongoing health issues this was all too much of a burden and he ultimately took
his own life. Not that Billy Mitchell would ever care, though. In fact, when Billy Mitchell thought Apollo died earlier he expressed joy at the thought.
Developments
Formal Lawsuit
On September 23rd, 2021, Karl Jobst uploaded a video titled "I'm Being SUED and CANCELLED"[4] in which he details his first lawsuit at the hands of Mitchell. This wouldn't be the first one, however, with a follow-up video coming out on November 5th, 2022, titled "Billy Mitchell Has Gone Insane And I Need Your Help,"[5] which details the second and third lawsuit by Mitchell filed against Jobst. The two videos have gained over 1 million and 820,000 views, respectively, in roughly three months (shown below).
Photos of Donkey Kong Arcade Cabinet
On January 29th, 2023, Karl Jobst then uploaded a video going over a key part of the lawsuit that claims Billy Mitchell obtained a score of over 1 million points in Donkey Kong on original hardware at a Florida convention, showcasing alleged photographic evidence that the machine itself had non-original hardware on it (and was reportedly the only Donkey Kong arcade machine at the event).
This development led to speculation from detractors of Mitchell that his cases are now guaranteed to be lost, as explained by Cr1tikal in his video[6] about the event, uploaded on January 30th, 2023, which received over 3 million views in one day (shown below, left). Additional YouTubers and content creators covered the development in late January 2023 as word of the cheating allegations spread online (example shown below, right)
Resolution
On April 1st, 2025, District Court of Queensland announced the verdict,[8] finding Jobst guilty of defamation and ordering him to pay a sum of approximately 400,000 AUD ($250,000) for reputational damages, as well as cover Mitchell's legal expenses.
On that day, both Jobst and Mitchell reported on the verdict on X[10][11] / Twitter, with their posts gaining over 830 reposts and 11,000 likes and 180 reposts and 1,000 likes, respectively. Multiple news accounts also reported on the verdict, including viral posts by @DramaAlert and @KiwiFarmsDotNet.[12][13]
Backlash Against Jobst
As the news about the verdict went viral on social media, multiple posts stating that Karl Jobst had misled those who donated to his legal defense campaign and supported him were circulated on social media. Particularly, multiple users[14][15][16] wrote that Jobst managed to present the lawsuit as centered around Karl's claims that Mitchell was a cheater, obscuring its true nature of being about Jobst insinuating in the 2021 video that Mitchell was in part responsible for Apollo Legend's suicide.
Multiple videos about the lawsuit were posted on YouTube in the hours following the verdict being announced. On April 1st, 2025, YouTuber[17] SomeOrdinaryGamers posted a video about the lawsuit that received over 333,000 views in one day.
On April 1st, 2025, Jobst responded to the backlash on X,[18] writing that "he never claimed […] Billy sued him because he said he cheated" and that he "was never trying to hide why he was being sued." The post (shown below) garnered over 160 reposts and 2,400 likes in one day.
Search Interest
External References
[2] YouTube – DESTROYED By Judge
[3] YouTube – Billy Mitchell Response
[4] YouTube – Karl Jobst Lawsuit 1
[5] YouTube – Karl Jobst Lawsuit 2/3
[7] YouTube- The Biggest Conmen In Video Game History Strike Again!
[8] District Court of Queensland – Mitchell vs. Jobst
[9] Archive.ph – Response to Karl Jobst Regarding Apollo Legend
[10] X – @BillyPacman
[11] X – @karljobstgaming
[12] X – @DramaAlert
[13] X – @KiwiFarmsDotNet
[14] X – @j0ycongirl
[15] X – @LonelyGoomba
[16] X – @StutteringCraig
[17] YouTube – Billy Mitchell Won The Lawsuit…
[18] X – @karljobstgaming
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Top Comments
Chris the Lovable Jerk
Mar 31, 2025 at 10:55PM EDT in reply to
UnKewln00b
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