# Dispute Decision: Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong & All Other Records Removed



## Ericthegreat (Apr 13, 2018)

Seems ALL of his scores were removed, I do not think they should have removed his pac man score, it was done in front of a lot of people and was very hard to do, but I guess I kind of understand, anyway heres the link:

https://www.twingalaxies.com/feed_d...s-donkey-kong-and-all-other-records-removed/4


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## Deleted User (Apr 13, 2018)

Just heard about this, holy crap, Billy must be absolutely fucking FURIOUS right now!  

All his fault though. He cheated and wouldn't come clean. Id imagine that they have removed all his scores, not just the Long ones, because try were heavily associated with him. After this, ALL of his scores will be under the microscope.

Since he made money from this, I wonder if he could end up being sued by companies for fraud....?


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## Dungeonseeker (Apr 13, 2018)

Fuck Todd Rogers
Fuck Billy Mitchell

I would hope after all this controversy no site will ever entertain anything from these 2 again. It's bad enough cheating but these 2 made careers and a tonne of money of their cheating and lies, they basically defrauded anyone who ever paid them.

Winners don't do drugs and cheaters never prosper.


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## FAST6191 (Apr 13, 2018)

What is Twin Galaxies and why should I care what they think? I am not necessarily being snarky either; everybody and their mother seems to want to set up groups to note things in game world and thus I am never sure what goes. Reading the thing is sounds more like they are sticklers for "original hardware" (it is easier I guess but I have very little patience for that crowd) and say nothing about scores themselves being falsified.


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## Deleted User (Apr 13, 2018)

FAST6191 said:


> What is Twin Galaxies and why should I care what they think? I am not necessarily being snarky either; everybody and their mother seems to want to set up groups to note things in game world and thus I am never sure what goes. Reading the thing is sounds more like they are sticklers for "original hardware" (it is easier I guess but I have very little patience for that crowd) and say nothing about scores themselves being falsified.


Twin Galaxies are basically THE original high score site. They used to do sponsors and stuff, I believe, with Billy and a few others.
So it's kind of, if you're the kind of person who goes for high scores as a carrear, you've probably used TG or just read it at some point.


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## Taleweaver (Apr 13, 2018)

StarGazerTom said:


> So it's kind of, if you're the kind of person who goes for high scores as a carrear, you've probably used TG or just read it at some point.


I'm siding with @FAST6191 on this one, but your reply makes it clear why. I'm just not the kind of person who is in any way amazed by someone's high score. I'm sure there is more to e-sports to not being a pyramid scheme, but it'll be hard to find any non-gamer who even know who this guy (or that site) actually is.


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## tech3475 (Apr 13, 2018)

Taleweaver said:


> I'm siding with @FAST6191 on this one, but your reply makes it clear why. I'm just not the kind of person who is in any way amazed by someone's high score. I'm sure there is more to e-sports to not being a pyramid scheme, but it'll be hard to find any non-gamer who even know who this guy (or that site) actually is.



I only found out about TG because of these scandals.


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## FAST6191 (Apr 13, 2018)

Taleweaver said:


> but it'll be hard to find any non-gamer who even know who this guy (or that site) actually is.



That king of kong documentary from about 10 years ago got pretty popular and did a lot of the film festival circuit. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/
To that end you might find some who at least know the name and some of the background.


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## Veho (Apr 13, 2018)

Dungeonseeker said:


> these 2 made careers and a tonne of money of their cheating and lies
> [...]
> Winners don't do drugs and cheaters never prosper.


But you said yourself those two prospered from cheating. Make up your mind


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## T-hug (Apr 13, 2018)

Can't wait for King of Kong 2: The Redemption.


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## Deleted User (Apr 13, 2018)

T-hug said:


> Can't wait for King of Kong 2: The Redemption.


King of Kong 2: King of Con


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## Dungeonseeker (Apr 13, 2018)

Veho said:


> But you said yourself those two prospered from cheating. Make up your mind


Temporarily, look what's happening to them now because of their cheating. Cheaters will always be caught in the end, always.


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## FAST6191 (Apr 13, 2018)

Dungeonseeker said:


> Temporarily, look what's happening to them now because of their cheating. Cheaters will always be caught in the end, always.


Does it matter if it happens after you are dead?

Equally if he has indeed parleyed his win, or whatever it was, into a nice chunk of change as some seem to think (could not find a useful estimate of his net worth from a quick search) then he can happily fade into obscurity and never work another day in his life. Would be a win in my book.


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## Deleted User (Apr 13, 2018)

FAST6191 said:


> Does it matter if it happens after you are dead?
> 
> Equally if he has indeed parleyed his win, or whatever it was, into a nice chunk of change as some seem to think (could not find a useful estimate of his net worth from a quick search) then he can happily fade into obscurity and never work another day in his life. Would be a win in my book.


Because of the cheating, there's question on whether he can be done for fraud because he earned money from sponsorships and the like.


Basically, it could have much larger repercutions than just a few scores taken off the leader boards.


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## FAST6191 (Apr 13, 2018)

StarGazerTom said:


> Because of the cheating, there's question on whether he can be done for fraud because he earned money from sponsorships and the like.
> 
> 
> Basically, it could have much larger repercutions than just a few scores taken off the leader boards.


How many people have been done for that over the years?

There have been plenty of people caught out and out cheating* in sports over the decades and other than some contracts have a delayed payout/continuous payout be cancelled I am not aware of many big cases. That said I am seeing the Lance Armstrong stuff getting pretty far along at this point, though also reading some of the arguments the defence is putting forward it is not an easy thing.

*and this is not necessarily out and out cheating, merely a quirk of rules from where I sit. If he has demonstrated an ability to get somewhere near that score on other unquestioned occasions it gets even harder.


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## Deleted User (Apr 13, 2018)

FAST6191 said:


> How many people have been done for that over the years?
> 
> There have been plenty of people caught out and out cheating* in sports over the decades and other than some contracts have a delayed payout/continuous payout be cancelled I am not aware of many big cases. That said I am seeing the Lance Armstrong stuff getting pretty far along at this point, though also reading some of the arguments the defence is putting forward it is not an easy thing.
> 
> *and this is not necessarily out and out cheating, merely a quirk of rules from where I sit. If he has demonstrated an ability to get somewhere near that score on other unquestioned occasions it gets even harder.


I don't know how the laws work, and honestly I don't know how cheating is dealt with in sports, as I don't follow any at all.
I would imagine some sort of fine? But that's kinda why people are thinking and wondering how far this will really go.


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## kuwanger (Apr 13, 2018)

The thing is, the whole point of TG is not merely the endorsements and the payouts for his record.  In many ways, it becomes their identity.  And even faking it (as in the hours and hours you have to play in public) is really, really hard.  So, one effectively loses their identity and is known as a cheater.  Sure, some people will still regard him highly because he wasn't a complete cheater.  But then a lot of people didn't care about TG at all.

Basically it comes down to, if you set out to be conman, I don't think you'd care as long as you made enough money to make it worthwhile.  If it did it because the actual recognition meant something to you, then this action by TG really destroys who you are.  Really, if it wasn't worth it to get the fame, they wouldn't have worked so hard to fake it.


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## cracker (Apr 13, 2018)

Ha! I watched an update video a few weeks ago as to evidence of shadiness (even more than the VHS tape being counted despite the rules). I'm so glad he was dethroned and everyone now knows what a con he is.

@FAST6191 The original hardware bit isn't just nitpicking. There was shown to be timing issues in MAME that created an unfair advantage for him in at least one game he got a high score in.


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## FAST6191 (Apr 13, 2018)

StarGazerTom said:


> I don't know how the laws work, and honestly I don't know how cheating is dealt with in sports, as I don't follow any at all.
> I would imagine some sort of fine? But that's kinda why people are thinking and wondering how far this will really go.


Fines are an interesting one, not least of all because many are voluntary after a fashion -- only the government and their sanctioned bodies* can levy ones you are compelled to pay, give or take contract law which is a different matter again.

*which can include some professional bodies but this gets very odd -- usually see it in medical and financial circles, technically you could not pay it but you would lose any accreditation that you have and thus may be walking away from a lot more, other times the professional body is a real government thing with actual powers.

One of the articles I skimmed for the last post actually covers some of the stuff involved
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/feb/14/lance-armstrong-lawsuit-government-fraud

I don't really see a path for government fines here, there are no game playing professional bodies (see the earlier comment about everybody and their mother -- this is one of the problems with such a thing) and thus we are down to contract law and civil law with whatever sponsors or leagues the dude might have been involved in. As such contracts are extremely unlikely to be public at this point (if they are made public as part of a court case then that will likely be the only time we get to see such things) I have little to go on. Equally at this point as far as I am aware it is an internal investigation and that also plays into what might be able to be done, or what needs further investigation as laws on private investigations in computing are complicated.

I also have to stress again this is not necessarily cheating, to use words common in the sorts of contracts mentioned then it might well be a "deceptive or dishonest practice", possibly also "unsportsmanlike" but that is a whole other can of worms. Cheating most likely requires an active component, not sure where to look for this but gambling laws vis a vis things like card counting are probably not the worst start.

A place to watch might be https://www.youtube.com/user/ljfrench009/videos?disable_polymer=1 as that guy is a proper lawyer and covers a lot of these game related cases.



cracker said:


> Ha! I watched an update video a few weeks ago as to evidence of shadiness (even more than the VHS tape being counted despite the rules). I'm so glad he was dethroned and everyone now knows what a con he is.
> 
> @FAST6191 The original hardware bit isn't just nitpicking. There was shown to be timing issues in MAME that created an unfair advantage for him in at least one game he got a high score in.


While I don't disagree that inaccurate emulation could make for some interesting twists I suppose it is more that I have spent too long laughing at the nonsense that various speedrunning communities get up to and it is spilling over into this.


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## kuwanger (Apr 13, 2018)

FAST6191 said:


> I also have to stress again this is not necessarily cheating, to use words common in the sorts of contracts mentioned then it might well be a "deceptive or dishonest practice", possibly also "unsportsmanlike" but that is a whole other can of worms. Cheating most likely requires an active component, not sure where to look for this but gambling laws vis a vis things like card counting are probably not the worst start.



The argument that it's not cheating is hard because well, let's make an analogy.  Let's imagine instead of doing the Tour de France you put up a sophisticated blue screen with a simulator exercise bike with orientation and resistance, fans, etc to mimic the course.  Let's say it was even accurate enough that the equivalent of a TAS could replay both and it'd be equivalent.  Would it still be cheating?  In the end, I'd say yes precisely because one major component of Tour de France is following the rules, and the rules obviously including actually getting on a bike and pedaling a long and difficult course.

There's nothing that stopped Billy Mitchel from doing as many simulator/emulator runs as he wanted.  But the rules clearly state to use real hardware, and he chose to post emulator results because that was easier for him than having to recreate the effort on real hardware or do it all on real hardware.  Even presuming MAME was perfect (which the whole way he was caught proves its not), he still ignored the rules just so he could be on top.  It might also be "deceptive or dishonest practice" and "unsportsmanlike".  But, I still think it's cheating as well.


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## FAST6191 (Apr 13, 2018)

While I have no objection, other than my philosophical ones, to him being stripped of records on that site (and others that pull from it/reference it/hold it up as their chosen standard), and I presume there is a "word of the internal review team is final" line in the site terms somewhere to cover their arses, I am still not at cheating being proven for this one.
Cheating from where I sit requires the attempt to actively influence the outcome outside the remit of the game, and in some cases using a device to do it (card counting tending to have that one -- memorise all you want, use your phone to record the cards going out and then you are then considered to be cheating).


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## kuwanger (Apr 13, 2018)

Yeah, I understand.  It just seems to me that it's really difficult to prove there's an active advantage to using some non-original hardware, so that's why the rules make it clear that only original hardware is allowed.  It used to be that MAME was wildly inaccurate in tons of games, and there's tons of other arcade and console emulators that are wildly inaccurate, but actually knowing how to exploit them and proving that exploit is really hard.  I can fully understand why you'd feel it doesn't amount to cheating until they can prove his actions resulted in an advantage, but like card counting it's the aspect of using something outside yourself and the tools that make it card counting to me.  It's why a paper and pencil would be cheating even though in theory memorizing would be equivalent.  In practice, it's virtually impossible to know for certain.


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## cracker (Apr 16, 2018)

After reading up on it again I realize the major problem with MAME being used. It allows for essentially a TAS to be created for a 'single-shot' video to be created post-play. Of course, it can't be proven one way or another at this point and the only witness is involved in a speed-run scandal.  The burden of proof was all on BM and he failed - legitimate or not.


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## Condarkness_XY (Apr 24, 2018)

Another one bites the dust... And another one and another one bites the dust.


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## DarthDub (Apr 24, 2018)

I don't see the problem in using an emulator. Game's so old and hard to find, also very expensive.


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## FAST6191 (Apr 24, 2018)

DarthDub said:


> I don't see the problem in using an emulator. Game's so old and hard to find, also very expensive.


I imagine it is more of an ease of verification thing.

Two main things.
1) it is trivial to do a tool assisted run (or an outright AI run) on an emulator.
2) emulation is not always accurate and if you are playing at the ragged edge (and people that routinely end up playing to the point of a killscreen are) then it starts to really matter if it is not. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011...-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/ covers something like it for the timing side of things, and if you ever looked into the random number generator (RNG) side of pokemon hacking you have a good example of another thing where emulators occasionally fall short*.

*a classic one might be uninitialised memory. When you turn a computer on its memory is typically random until you set it to be something else. If you read this memory before then you have a nice random number. If the emulator starts it at the same all 00s or a fixed random pattern then the game might make supposedly random actions be the same and thus make the game easier. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number_b.html is a nice example of such a thing going wrong, albeit not for a game.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 14, 2019)

Seems one Mr Mitchell fired back with a lawsuit threat

This guy historically has done quite a bit of game law (normally copyright related) but works for me here


Twin galaxies published the evidence package (which seems fairly compelling for Mr Mitchell)and the notice sent
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BMbW-_fSwCFQ1Kzl59pj7TnoQiuAdgcJ/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sAW-RRD0-qdg_TcKZHk9Aaoj5bGovz14/view


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## cracker (Sep 14, 2019)

It doesn't matter if he had perfect timing to pull off the maneuvers people think were impossible or not. The fact still remains that the screen drawing in the video has never been able to be replicated on an actual coinop. This strongly points to an emulator being used. It is interesting that (as far as I have read on this) Billy seems to be the only one allowed to submit his arcade runs via recordings rather than doing it live with a judge present...


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