Donkey Kong champion wins defamation case against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst

> Mr Mitchell said that John Weeks was the organiser of an auction of the world’s largest collection of pinball and arcade gaming machines. Mr Mitchell had an agreement with him to host the auction for a fee of $50,000. After the publication of the video, Mr Weeks cancelled the agreement, apparently because of the negativity surrounding Mr Mitchell as a result of the video. Mr Mitchell later received an email from Mr Weeks confirming that cancellation, in which he said:

> "As per our previous conversation, I apologize for our decision to withdraw our agreement with you to host you at our auction due to the allegations from Karl Jobst that you played a significant role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life. We made the decision strictly for business reasons and I do not feel personal discontent with you, but the negativity brought by the claims presented too large a risk to us strictly from a business perspective."

> Mr Mitchell recalled that another person, Ryan Burger, who had booked him for three separate events, cancelled all three and has not since booked him to appear at any events. Mr Burger also sent him an email cancelling the third event, saying:

> "Due to the toxicity and negativity brought by Karl Jobst’s claim that you played a role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life, Old School Gamer Magazine feels compelled to withdraw its $5,000 per weekend paid appearance offer also for the Midwest Gaming Classic. I had hoped that this would have faded by now so we didn’t have to cancel this event similar to Des Moines Gaming Classic and Planet Comicon appearances that we had withdrawn earlier this summer, but I think it’s best that we allow some time to pass given the current climate."

> Whether or not the reasons given in those emails were true, the withdrawal of the offers demonstrated a harmful effect of the video on Mr Mitchell’s reputation and the receipt of the emails affected Mr Mitchell’s personal reactions to the video.

Jobst's team argued that the suicide accusation didn't cause any damage because Mitchell's already poor reputation and the other claims he made in the video meant that it couldn't be harmed further. The judge pointed out in his decision that the cheating allegations and the suicide allegations impacted different "sectors" of Mitchell's reputation and that "In seeking to prove that the plaintiff already had a bad reputation (whether as a defence to an allegation of harm to reputation or because of substantially true contextual imputations), the allegedly bad reputation must be relevant to that “sector” of the plaintiff’s reputation that is, or may be, harmed by the imputations proved by the plaintiff." You're right that Jobst's team didn't literally argue that cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide.

Well, the silver lining for Jobst in all of this is that he did build his YouTube channel (partly) on ranting about Billy, and that might be worth more than what he paid here.

Billy to my mind is a bit annoying but he’s a mild “villain” in the documentary. I mean it’s video game high scores and very compulsive people..

I should watch it again.

But there are successful channels like Neural Viz though I think that still takes script writing

EDIT: Apparently he advertises their hot sauce