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.

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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

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Billy the Chad keeps on winning!!!

Haters BTFO! Karl Jobst on suicide watch!

 

[Marc_LFD]

He's a known cheater in the video game world it's no wonder things were settled.

 

[jared_core]

This will kill Karl Jobst. After all these months and years they just settle. I feel violated.

Post automatically merged: Jan 17, 2024

Looks like the only winners here were the lawyers.

https://imgflip.com/i/8com0f

 

[raxadian]

I hope all his records, be them real or fake get beaten.

 

[ShadowOne333]

I hope all his records, be them real or fake get beaten.

They have for the longest time, his original records aren't even on the top for a while now.
Now Todd Rogers' on the other hand...

 

[Xzi]

That one episode of Regular Show really captured his essence perfectly.

 

[ShadowOne333]

That one episode of Regular Show really captured his essence perfectly.

Didn't he also sue that show over that very episode?

 

[Xzi]

Didn't he also sue that show over that very episode?

I think so, or at least he tried to.

 

[ShadowOne333]

I think so, or at least he tried to.

Damn Mitchell throwing out lawsuits like he's Oprah

 

[Kioku]

Damn Mitchell throwing out lawsuits like he's Oprah

Throw enough out and one or two may just stick… So weird to me that they settled on a technicality. Dude has to try and stay relevant though. Completely forgot he existed until this article.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Throw enough out and one or two may just stick… So weird to me that they settled on a technicality. Dude has to try and stay relevant though. Completely forgot he existed until this article.

Or maybe throw enough out and one or two might bite him in the ass, which is more or less what he's asking for given the outcome here.

 

[Darth Meteos]

Todd Rogers' scores are also up in that database.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Todd Rogers' scores are also up in that database.

Which is laughable, all of the other records being 0.10 behind his so called legit "highest record score"

 

[Kioku]

As

Or maybe throw enough out and one or two might bite him in the ass, which is more or less what he's asking for given the outcome here.

That would be nice. Can’t see this going on for much longer though. Unless good old Billy boy here thinks it’s not enough..

 

[CoolMe]

Lawsuit for the sake of publicity?

 

[ZeroFX]

I want to call this cheater a cheater just for the lols, cheater.

 

[ShadowOne333]

That would be nice. Can’t see this going on for much longer though. Unless good old Billy boy here thinks it’s not enough..

That's the most plausible outcome. He has almost everything against him right now, and the opinion of the so called "expert" can only get him so far compared to proper comparisons and other experts on the field of both emulation and hardware.

 

[Snintendog]

Billy the Chad keeps on winning!!!

Haters BTFO! Karl Jobst on suicide watch!

the quicker Karl goes away the better everything becomes. Still waiting to this day for the acutal lawsuit to manifest in anyway shape or form. Same with the Wata Lawsuit and the Jirad one. To me all i have seen is Karl be a worthless liar and scamming thousands out of people for suits that doesn't exist on paper and just his word.

 

[NinStar]

Karl's pin on the latest Billy Mitchell video
View attachment 414491

I don't like how he's been acting lately, he seems a bit too confident in what he's saying, even when it's not entirely true.

I'm not trying to defend Billy Mitchell, he is a cheater and everyone knows that, but some of the information on that video is misleading (including the title itself) and he deliberately decided to not include some crucial context like the fact that Twin Galaxies lawyer faced misconduct claims, this will only give more weight to whatever Billy decides to say in his lawsuit against him, also the fact that he is downplaying Mitchells lawyers just because they are there to represent him feels dishonest (he often do that to anyone he disagree).

I have the exact same opinion about The Completionist situation, again, not trying to defend the guy (Jirard in this case), but Karl's claims that the charity is a fraud without giving evidence that shows they used the money for something else probably wouldn't do him any favors in case Jirard decides to sue him.

 

[MarkDarkness]

I find the lengths that this guy goes to in order to affirm these records both bemusing and borderline scary.