After several years in legal battles between Billy Mitchell against Twin Galaxies for the infamous defamation lawsuit has finally come to a close on January 16th, 2024, as the involved parties have reached a private settlement to finalize the lawsuit.

Billy Mitchell is a widely known character in the professional gaming community for his then records of famous arcade games, like Donkey Kong and Pacman. Since then, his original records have been heavily questioned by the community, hinting at plausible fraud in the videotapes Mitchell submitted back then to achieve his records, with comparison videos and analysis given between his videos and how MAME loaded levels for the games he achieved records at, essentially claiming he cheated to achieve them.

Given the whole ordeal, Billy Mitchell started throwing defamation lawsuits to those claiming he cheated to get his records, and the one of those lawsuits was against the authoritative body that documents achievements and records in gaming since 1981, Twin Galaxies. Mitchell's defamation lawsuit came after Twin Galaxies decided to remove Mitchell's records from their databases back in 2018. Mitchell officially filed for the defamation lawsuit in 2019 in the state of California.

Since then, both parties have been involved in a legal war, and it wasn't until January 16th, 2024, that the case came to a close with a private settlement set between the two involved parties to officially end the lawsuit, after the expert opinion of Dr. Michael Zyda, who gave his full opinion and is currently available for public viewing.

Twin Galaxies released a statement on their official website regarding the private settlement, detailing a summary of how the whole ordeal came to be, and how it ended given the settlement that just took place. While the statement is somewhat lengthy, one of the most important paragraphs out of the statement is the following:

In fair consideration of the expert opinion provided by Dr. Zyda on behalf of Mr. Mitchell, and consistent with Twin Galaxies' dedication to the meticulous documentation and preservation of video game score history, Twin Galaxies shall heretofore reinstate all of Mr. Mitchell’s scores as part of the official historical database on Twin Galaxies’ website.

Dr. Zyda's opinion can basically be summed up to hardware failures, degradation, quality loss and/or non-maintenance of either the arcade cabinets Mitchell used to achieve the records, or the hardware used to fabricate or distribute the videotapes.

Just as Twin Galaxies released their statement, Billy Mitchel also released his own statement on his X account (currently locked to followers only) regarding the private settlement, where he mentions the following:

Twin Galaxies has reinstated all of my world records from my videogame career. Here's my statement:

As for the legal parties involved, in an interview with Arstechnica, Twin Galaxies' lawyer David Tashroudian goes into some details about the private settlement, with the possibility of the settlement being made to avoid both a long term legal action, and most of all, avoid large expenses:

A ton of cases end up settling prior to trial, just to avoid the expense and for all the parties to get finality and certainty on their own terms, there were going to be an inordinate amount of costs involved, and both parties were facing a lot of uncertainty at trial, and they wanted to get the matter settled on their own terms without putting it to a jury.

Tashroudian additionally mentions that Twin Galaxies had almost everything ready for a potential upcoming trial against Billy Mitchell, including evidence questioning Mitchell's witnesses and experts, as well as photo evidence of Mitchell in score events with arcade cabinets that had modified joysticks, which invalidates any record from being registered due to the hardware being modified.

---

What does this mean at the end of the day?
Were Billy Mitchell's scores reinstated after all?

While Billy Mitchell's previous records have been restored to Twin Galaxies' historical database, this doesn't mean that Mitchell's original scores (which were the ones being brought into question) were reinstated. Only the historical database showcases Mitchell's records for archival purposes, but not the current main records by Twin Galaxies, meaning that Billy Mitchell's records are not going to be reinstated to the official main world records, and Billy Mitchell still remains banned from Twin Galaxies competition as well.

In an email response by Twin Galaxies, they answer the following questions to clear out any doubts about the settlement of the case:

Twin Galaxies' Statement
Billy Mitchell's Statement
Twin Galaxies Historical Database

 

[The Catboy]

I love that the settlement is just acknowledging that Billy Mitchell even existed and nothing else, lol

 

[ShadowOne333]

I love that the settlement is just acknowledging that Billy Mitchell even existed and nothing else, lol

Indeed lol
It's just like "Okay your records existed, but that's about it".

Guess both parties didn't want to end up in bankruptcy out of this case.
What amazes me the most, is that Mitchell is still not out of the bag yet, as he still has other lawsuits left to tackle from all the lawsuit tantrums he threw out years ago:

 

[The Catboy]

Indeed lol
It's just like "Okay your records existed, but that's about it".

Guess both parties didn't want to end up in bankruptcy out of this case.
What amazes me the most, is that Mitchell is still not out of the bag yet, as he still has other lawsuits left to tackle from all the lawsuit tantrums he threw out years ago:

Twin most likely decided it wasn’t worth it but there’s still hope the Karl and the other lawsuits go through.

 

[osaka35]

Looks like the only winners here were the lawyers.

 

[Ryab]

View attachment 414462​

After several years in legal battles between Billy Mitchell against Twin Galaxies for the infamous defamation lawsuit has finally come to a close on January 16th, 2024, as the involved parties have reached a private settlement to finalize the lawsuit.

Billy Mitchell is a widely known character in the professional gaming community for his then records of famous arcade games, like Donkey Kong and Pacman. Since then, his original records have been heavily questioned by the community, hinting at plausible fraud in the videotapes Mitchell submitted back then to achieve his records, with comparison videos and analysis given between his videos and how MAME loaded levels for the games he achieved records at, essentially claiming he cheated to achieve them.

Given the whole ordeal, Billy Mitchell started throwing defamation lawsuits to those claiming he cheated to get his records, and the one of those lawsuits was against the authoritative body that documents achievements and records in gaming since 1981, Twin Galaxies. Mitchell's defamation lawsuit came after Twin Galaxies decided to remove Mitchell's records from their databases back in 2018. Mitchell officially filed for the defamation lawsuit in 2019 in the state of California.

Since then, both parties have been involved in a legal war, and it wasn't until January 16th, 2024, that the case came to a close with a private settlement set between the two involved parties to officially end the lawsuit, after the expert opinion of Dr. Michael Zyda, who gave his full opinion and is currently available for public viewing.

Twin Galaxies released a statement on their official website regarding the private settlement, detailing a summary of how the whole ordeal came to be, and how it ended given the settlement that just took place. While the statement is somewhat lengthy, one of the most important paragraphs out of the statement is the following:



Dr. Zyda's opinion can basically be summed up to hardware failures, degradation, quality loss and/or non-maintenance of either the arcade cabinets Mitchell used to achieve the records, or the hardware used to fabricate or distribute the videotapes.

Just as Twin Galaxies released their statement, Billy Mitchel also released his own statement on his X account (currently locked to followers only) regarding the private settlement, where he mentions the following:



As for the legal parties involved, in an interview with Arstechnica, Twin Galaxies' lawyer David Tashroudian goes into some details about the private settlement, with the possibility of the settlement being made to avoid both a long term legal action, and most of all, avoid large expenses:



Tashroudian additionally mentions that Twin Galaxies had almost everything ready for a potential upcoming trial against Billy Mitchell, including evidence questioning Mitchell's witnesses and experts, as well as photo evidence of Mitchell in score events with arcade cabinets that had modified joysticks, which invalidates any record from being registered due to the hardware being modified.

---

What does this mean at the end of the day?
Were Billy Mitchell's scores reinstated after all?

While Billy Mitchell's previous records have been restored to Twin Galaxies' historical database, this doesn't mean that Mitchell's original scores (which were the ones being brought into question) were reinstated. Only the historical database showcases Mitchell's records for archival purposes, but not the current main records by Twin Galaxies, meaning that Billy Mitchell's records are not going to be reinstated to the official main world records, and Billy Mitchell still remains banned from Twin Galaxies competition as well.

In an email response by Twin Galaxies, they answer the following questions to clear out any doubts about the settlement of the case:

View attachment 414469​

Twin Galaxies' Statement
Billy Mitchell's Statement
Twin Galaxies Historical Database

From what I can tell they basically came to a compromise because it wasn't worth fighting him in court anymore.

 

[TheStonedModder]

Indeed lol
It's just like "Okay your records existed, but that's about it".

Guess both parties didn't want to end up in bankruptcy out of this case.
What amazes me the most, is that Mitchell is still not out of the bag yet, as he still has other lawsuits left to tackle from all the lawsuit tantrums he threw out years ago:

Billy is the textbook definition of a man child at this point. I’m really surprised he isn’t just sitting in his mothers basement all day long waiting for his chocolate milk

 

[Jacobh]

I enjoyed the King of Kong movie a lot. However, many of the people involved (particularly Billy Mitchell) seem completely insufferable.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

Looks like the only winners here were the lawyers.

 

[Ericzander]

I feel like I should start all my posts with "As a lawyer..." lol.

But really, what a frivolous suit in the first place. I'm kind of surprised that they ended up settling in the end. Billy's expert seems like a hack, but if I put myself in the shoes of Twin Galaxy's lawyers, I'd be a little concerned that a jury could take the "expert opinion" BS seriously. Ironic that Billy says "never surrender" when ultimately all he gained was Twin Galaxies putting something on the website that anyone could have just grabbed via The Wayback Machine.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

I feel like I should start all my posts with "As a lawyer..." lol.

But really, what a frivolous suit in the first place. I'm kind of surprised that they ended up settling in the end. Billy's expert seems like a hack, but if I put myself in the shoes of Twin Galaxy's lawyers, I'd be a little concerned that a jury could take the "expert opinion" BS seriously. Ironic that Billy says "never surrender" when ultimately all he gained was Twin Galaxies putting something on the website that anyone could have just grabbed via The Wayback Machine.

He knew he'd lose - unless defamations go actually in front of a jury

 

[JuanMena]

Finally, it's over. Now the entire world can put his attention onto other matters.

Seriously though, why is this front page, it's not like it was important in the first place.

 

[ILuvGames]

He also has a case against Karl Jobst which he won't get away from so easily it seems.

 

[linuxares]

He also has a case against Karl Jobst which he won't get away from so easily it seems.

Karl's pin on the latest Billy Mitchell video

 

[ShadowOne333]

He also has a case against Karl Jobst which he won't get away from so easily it seems.

That's the one that has me intrigued.
Not only because of the outcome, but because it might also set a precedent for Jobst's legal standings and expertise if The Completionist does go forward with his so called threats of a defamation suit on his own.

 

[Kwyjor]

Since then, both parties have been involved in a legal war, and it wasn't until January 16th, 2024, that the case came to a close with a private settlement set between the two involved parties to officially end the lawsuit, after the expert opinion of Dr. Michael Zyda, who gave his full opinion and is currently available for public viewing.

That's a lot shorter than I expected. I can't possibly be the first person who thinks it's more than a little suspect that the component degradation and recording anomalies just so happen to match what you'd get from an old version of MAME. But I don't think I'm going to watch the hours and hours and hours of Youtube commentary on the subject to find out. Lawyers aren't the only winners here.

 

[ShadowOne333]

That's a lot shorter than I expected. I can't possibly be the first person who thinks it's more than a little suspect that the component degradation and recording anomalies just so happen to match what you'd get from an old version of MAME. But I don't think I'm going to watch the hours and hours and hours of Youtube commentary on the subject to find out. Lawyers aren't the only winners here.

Yeah I'm also calling bs on that, no combination of degradation, non-maintenance or corrosion will ever make an arcade cabinet load a level frame-by-frame in the same way MAME did.

 

[x65943]

Yeah I'm also calling bs on that, no combination of degradation, non-maintenance or corrosion will ever make an arcade cabinet load a level frame-by-frame in the same way MAME did.

One time my original star wars VHS copy degraded and now it's the star wars special edition remaster from the 90s

 

[ShadowOne333]

One time my original star wars VHS copy degraded and now it's the star wars special edition remaster from the 90s

Oh shit, just don't submit that degraded VHS copy to the National Film Registry as the original plz.

 

[codezer0]

That's the one that has me intrigued.
Not only because of the outcome, but because it might also set a precedent for Jobst's legal standings and expertise if The Completionist does go forward with his so called threats of a defamation suit on his own.

After everything that unfolded about the Completionist as of late, and then his first new video in years was on the Mario rpg remake and he wants to preface it with a YouTuber textbook apology rant, that was by and large one of the easiest unsubscribes ive ever done.

Scratch that, Escapist losing Yahtzee and Zero Punctuation was the easiest unsub. But this was close.