by ersatz_cats
As you’ve probably heard by now, Billy Mitchell the Donkey Kong cheater has thrown in the towel on his defamation lawsuit against legacy gaming scorekeeper Twin Galaxies. Most of the early reactions I saw assumed this was some kind of win for Billy, but I assure you, this was nothing of the sort. Moments ago, TG released a public statement, which was certainly negotiated as part of the settlement. At first blush, this statement reads like a win for Billy, who probably doesn’t realize the subtext of the statement he agreed to is making fun of him. While the statement does require some between-the-lines interpretation, I’m here to explain, briefly, why this entire endeavor was a hilarious and epic defeat for Mr. Mullet.
Before the end of the month, I’ll publish a full-sized update going over all the available details of the settlement/resolution itself, and the events leading up to it. But I wanted to get a quick update posted on the site now, to clear up some confusion I’ve seen. For legal reasons, I should make clear that everything that follows is my personal opinion, based strictly on publicly available evidence.
There’s an assumption that a settlement must necessarily be bad for the defendant. After all, that’s the connotation given when someone accused of sexual assault settles with his accuser, or when a business accused of knowingly harming customers settles out of court. But that assumption doesn’t apply here. This case involved Billy’s “defamation” lawsuit against TG and TG’s countersuit against Billy for fraud. (TG founder Walter Day had recently been dropped as a co-defendant.) Neither side could just drop their case unilaterally and walk away. Both parties were “defendants”. Also remember, we’re talking U.S. court rules, which means that even though TG’s defense against Billy’s defamation claim was (and still is) an ironclad lock, they wouldn’t necessarily win anything for fighting that claim to the end. (Yes, there are caveats, but we’ll discuss those in the next update.) On the other hand, to win a monetary judgment in its countersuit, TG would have had to prove, among other things, that Billy was liable for fraud in the sale of Twin Galaxies from Walter Day to Jace Hall. It’s easy to say “Of course Billy was liable, his scores were bogus”, but legally, it’s more complicated than that. Settlements are also a complicated matter, as I’ve been learning along the way. Both sides have to make good faith efforts, or else they risk something like a $1 judgment even if they win. In short, you can’t just stonewall, hoping the court awards you a big payday. If the other side makes a reasonable offer, your counteroffer can’t just be “Eat shit and go to hell”. There have to be concessions and counterplay.
Again, we’ll get into everything in more detail soon. But with all of that said, here’s what we know to be true:
- No matter what you may have heard, and no matter what the official statement said, Billy Mitchell’s cheated Donkey Kong scores were not reinstated. This isn’t rocket science. Go to TG’s Donkey Kong leaderboard. They ain’t there! (Billy’s highest cheated score was 1,062,800.) His claimed Pac-Man score from 1999 is also still gone. That was the whole point of Billy’s lawsuit, was it not? To get his scores put back on the leaderboard alongside everyone else? So right there, Billy has lost.
- Have you seen this legacy scoreboard archive TG refers to in its statement? It’s actually awesome! It just shows the scoreboard exactly as it existed when Jace Hall purchased it in 2014. Todd Rogers, Billy Mitchell, Michael Damiani, Rodrigo Lopes, they’re all there. TG isn’t saying any of these cheated scores were legitimate, obviously. Making this legacy scoreboard publicly available is just game history preservation. Anyone want to research these aspects of gaming history? There’s your resource.
- Putting the fact that Billy was not reinstated together with the reference to Billy’s scores being on this legacy archive, it seems clear to me that TG suckered Billy on the idea that this legacy scoreboard was some kind of meaningful concession. “Yeah, sure, bro. We’ll put your scores on our website, right alongside Todd fucking Rogers.” I can just imagine Billy sitting there, dumb enough to think this was a compliment, while Jace and Tash were trying to hold their laughter the entire time.
- From there, you can probably put two and two together, and see why the statement on its surface reads as if it’s favorable to Billy. Billy wasn’t going to agree to something that openly and unambiguously made him look foolish. TG had to offer something Billy would actually sign off on. TG’s statement does use the word “reinstate”, even though that’s not the least bit accurate, at least not in any meaningful way. Perhaps that was a word Billy absolutely insisted on, and which TG allowed as a way of greasing the wheels? “Fine, we’re not reinstating your bullshit scores, they’re not coming back, but if it’s really that important to you that the word ‘reinstate’ gets used somewhere in the statement, I guess we’ll throw the word in somehow.” I imagine Jace also then patted him on the head and assured him “Don’t worry, little Billy, Santa Claus is still real.”
- We have not been told what money if any changed hands, and we will probably never know. But we do know that Billy had absolutely zero chance of convincing a jury he was “defamed” by TG’s dispute verdict, and that TG had a very good likelihood of prevailing in the countersuit. I can tell you, strictly from my knowledge of and research into this case, there is no way on this green Earth TG gave Billy any money whatsoever. We can also assume that Billy’s lawyers, who initially took the case on contingency (more on that at another time) would want to get paid for their time and effort. I guess what I’m saying is, I can’t tell you Billy lost money (more than he had already lost through this entire process), nor can I tell you to go tell all your friends that Billy paid TG a bunch of money to make the case go away. But it would be very hilarious if you chose to do that strictly of your own accord. I certainly will not stop you. (Oh, and on that note, Billy would have always tried to avoid paying out any monetary judgment; a settlement is a contract he cannot avoid.)
- Besides what can be publicly observed, the exact terms of the settlement are confidential. Note that, while it’s common for settlements to be confidential, that’s not strictly necessary. One of the parties has to insist on that. In this case, TG has been brutally open and honest throughout the entire process, even though in many ways the score dispute has been a fiasco for its brand. They’ve shared evidence, witness testimony, and depositions, up until the point Billy’s side petitioned the court to make everything confidential. Meanwhile, Billy has always relied on secret evidence, all while lying to the public and declaring that “everything will be transparent”, etc. Close your eyes and imagine Billy Mitchell on his knees begging Jace Hall “Please, you cannot tell them what I gave up to make this go away!!”
- OH. MY. GOSH. Have you seen this “analysis” from Billy’s technical “expert”, Michael Zyda? That may have been the laziest, most half-assed attempt anyone from Billy’s camp has ever offered to explain away the MAME signatures. It may as well have been from the old “Billy Mitchell Defense Wheel”. There’ll be plenty of time to make fun of Mikey Zee later. After all the exhausting testing so many people had done, there is no way any of Zyda’s idle speculation carried any weight with TG. But what I find interesting is that this “analysis” (if you could even call it that) was made public at all. Recall that Billy’s settlement with Guinness included vague allusions to the notion of supposedly exonerating evidence, which we weren’t allowed to see. (And ironically, it was the discovery process in this case that confirmed what a fraud that was.) I believe this was one of the concessions TG received in return. “Oh sure, you can tell everyone you had a technical expert. But you don’t get to keep your bullshit secret. Everyone’s gonna see how utterly laughable your last line of defense was.”
- Lastly, the original DK dispute thread, and the post-dispute thread, are going away. As far as the settlement goes, I’m not sure what to make of this one. TG had already locked away other dispute threads relating to scores removed for cheating, including the infamous Dragster dispute thread. Was this just part of that policy, or was this another concession Billy asked for, in the hopes of making the evidence go away? It would be hilarious if TG “conceded” to Billy something they intended to do anyway. At any rate, don’t worry. Much of the material is already preserved, and efforts are already underway to recover what remains. It’s not a priority in this immediate moment, but at some point, it will all be made public again, independently of Twin Galaxies.
So let’s go over all of this one more time. Billy got… a historical resource which TG should have anyway… and something else TG was going to do on its own anyway… and not any of the material things he wanted. And he decided this was all he could get.
We’ll get into all the other details next time. I think part of some people’s initial disappointment when the news of a settlement first broke was, they were expecting a trial verdict, and so this is not what they were expecting. But honestly, what we got the past few years was better than a trial. Would any other defendant and attorney have been so open about everything throughout the process? In a “normal” litigation, we never would have seen Billy’s worthless “evidence” packet, or his story about his doctor refusing to see him, or his claim that TG’s verdict gave him a hernia. We might never have seen Billy’s letters with Guinness proving what a sham their “reinstatement” was, and we definitely never would have seen Billy’s entire six hour deposition full of lies. And sure, it seems we didn’t get a public apology from Billy, but did you really think that would ever happen?
And from TG’s perspective, the message is clear: “You can sue us, but if you do, you will be mocked relentlessly, and you will never get your scores back.” (Obviously that’s my own speculative paraphrase.) But we don’t have to guess how TG feels about Billy’s scores. Check out the newly opened TG merch store, where you can get a “not arcade” mug like this for yourself!
And if that’s still not enough, if you still just want to see Billy take a hard “L” to the face in a courtroom, with a fully confirmed monetary judgment, don’t worry. Billy’s not winning his case against Karl Jobst in Australia, and Aussie rules are a whole lot worse for dipshits like Billy Mitchell. Karl said it and it’s true: Suing Karl could be the single dumbest thing Billy has ever done.
I’ll leave it here for now. There are a lot more wrinkles to this, including what going to trial and winning the countersuit would have meant, and other hypothetical scenarios. I’ll go over all of that before the end of the month. And we shouldn’t forget that there’s also still Billy’s lawsuit against David Race in Florida. But as someone who has researched and followed this case very closely, and who is willing to break bad news when I have to, I love everything about this settlement… except for the official statement, which fluffs Billy’s ego, and gives casual readers the wrong impression.
Anyway, enjoy the rest of AGDQ! I’m gonna get back to work, but I’ll see you back here again soon.
Billy’s statement is live, reads as expected.
He was going to declare victory, no matter what happened.
And of course, people who take him at his word are already repeating his narrative.
https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/3500240/billy-mitchell-the-most-feared-arcade-game-champion-of-all-time-has-had-all-his-records-reinstated
What a total waste of time all this was in the end, billy can just continue to sue whoever he likes, claim all his scores are legit and now even claim TG statements agrees with his “technical expert” that all the evidence is just a fault cabinet
While I like your analysis generally (you’ve done some great stuff imho), this and the Karl video feel a little… cope.
The point of a SLAPP suit is to shut someone up. TG has been forced to remove all public statements about Billy cheating, they’ve archived the dispute, they’ve had to put up a ‘Billy’s special scores’ section, they’ve had to acknowledge his absolutely ludicrous ‘expert’ witness and they’re not allowed to talk about any of this going forward.
That feels like a loss. That feels like Billy spent a bunch of money to shut up his critics., and in the end his critics were, for the most part, forced to shut up.
Yes there are caveats, and things didn’t go his way, but lets be real. As you correctly point out, this was a slam dunk case. There is no world in which this should have been anything more than ‘Billy Mitchell tries to sue for defamation, gets told to fuck off and pay attorney fees for defendant.’
That he walked away with basically everything he wanted is a disgrace, and it feels like putting lipstick on a pig to try and tout this as some great victory.
If you want to think of this as a cope, that’s your choice. But please consider, I knew Billy would try to run away with the narrative as best he could. At the end of the day, we know what he REALLY wanted (what he got from Guinness), and we know factually that he didn’t get it. Someone has to counter his lies, and you can’t always do it by going “Gosh, golly, I think I may have found an error.”
He lost. And he surrendered. He can’t even unilaterally control the narrative anymore, because A) enough people have caught on to his lies, and know anything he says is immediately suss, and B) his conduct has been so reprehensible that most people familiar with the situation no longer want to help his narrative.
Anyway, don’t worry, my next write-up on this will be more down-to-Earth.
People are only going to read the headlines. Knowing that, that’s the value in elicting a statement and action from Twin Galaxies.
Karl Jobst has his video out. Views as expected. 🙂
The worst part about this settlement to me is I truly believe people like the Broken Token podcast, as well as other casual retro game fans will still hire Billy for their venues. They’ll watch him take 24+ hours to complete a perfect Pac-Man game, just for him to fail, hear him say it was legit, give their money, and proceed to clap. Especially when people like ersatz_cats himself and David Race could smash out that score first try.
Seriously… I guess assholes really can threaten and sue good people like David Race and Jace Hall, put them through years of financial and mental stress, only just get an egg on their face. The nicest way I can put it is: Fuck Bully Mitchell, and fuck Wendy Chang.
Now, I’ll stomp my way to the concessions stand and buy my stupid ass mug.
There will always be suckers. It would be hard to get all these venues and conventions to stop hiring Billy altogether. It would take enough people being willing to withdraw their money/attendance in opposition.
To be clear, I am no Pac-Man master at all. I can sometimes get through only the first 8 boards perfect. David though, yes, he can smash that shit in his first try.
And yes, fuck ’em.
Thank you for the update. To be clear, had Auntie MAME just slunk away in April 2018 and not sued, I would tell you today that he clearly was given the “gamer of the century” title from Namco and had the first perfect Pac Man score. And sure cheating is disrespectful of the game and other top gamers, but many top competitors across many sports and games fall into that trap where they feel they have to cheat to be considered #1 instead of #4 or whatever. I also honestly had thought of him as a self promoter type, and not a vexatious loser who had built his image on lies. Because he sued, we know a lot more now.
Oh, and one thing I learned as a parent – you can’t make someone admit the obvious truth if they don’t want to.
This is only a win for TG in the eyes of hardcore enthusiasts who can appreciate the duality of TG statement’s wording and other nuance. In the eyes of regular people tangentially following retro videogame news, this is absolutely a win for Billy. The entire gaming media is already flush with headlines that “Billy, former Donkey Kong champion, has his records reinstated”. His credibility in the eyes of the general public hasn’t wavered a bit – in fact, it may have improved because he fought a 4-year legal battle and seemingly won. If your case is ironclad, but a regular joe has to go through piles of technical analysis, court documents and a 6-hour deposition tape to realize it, you can’t win in the court of public opinion UNLESS you actually prevail at trial.
Now the Karl Jobst lawsuit takes on the mantle of being the “frontier” Billy case. This has a better chance at going the distance because Australian courts frequently award lawyer fee compensation to the winning party, which Karl would obviously want, and if he knows he’ll 100% win at trial he has seemingly no reason to back down.
That’s not really true. The so called “general public” don’t actually care about Billy at all. In actuality, there’s Billy’s fans and then there’s people like us. I would say most people who actually care about this are fully aware that he cheated and I feel like his public perception in general is not going to improve. The simple fact is that even if he lost in court, he would still attempt to spin it as a positive for his fans and pretend like he did prevail. You see, the average joe doesn’t actually have to go through all the court documents and deposition because that information is already public and presented in an way that’s easy to understand. We already have videos by Karl Jobst and Cr1TiKaL that say he cheated which are already racking up the views. These circles already started to gather more and more popularity all because of how terrible Mitchell is. Anyone outside of those circles don’t care about Billy and aren’t going to support him. Billy did in fact lose in the court of public opinion whether he wants to admit it or not.
At first blush I read the online outlets and thought it was probably good for TG. Sadly those outlets sure are having a field day making it sound like it was a win for Mitchell especially that bullshit analysis with Mikey Zee. Make that end of month write up a good one! I want to cc every one of those outlets and let them know what an embarrassment of reporting they did as I sip from my new mug. Lol
My next write-up will be VERY thorough. (I’m already thinking I may end up having to break it up to two parts.) But I don’t think it’ll change any minds. People who are interested in reading long things already know Billy is a cheater. And I can’t convince anyone who refuses to look at the evidence.
It’ll be something for the folks following this saga, who want to understand how and why this happened, and what it means from here.
While basically billy throw the towel in lawsuit, This exactly why I don’t want settlement, he will parade himself as winner, event the GBF’s regular show case thrown out by judge he found a way to parade himself won that lawsuit .. As ridiculous as it sounds…
Super disappointed with TG’s statements …. Considering the fact they refer to this “maybe” expert …i mean no technical proof …
Ps : you might want to be sued by billy now lol just so their side present you with this real confidential settlement you can read just like when karl provided with real apollo’s settlement
TG has one final card to play. They have to shut down. Their position as an authority in record keeping was already outdated, and now it’s a joke. Why would anyone want to be a party to it? Put Billy back on the board, sure, and then erase everything the day after. That is the only path forward.
No, TG’s great. No other gaming scoreboard would have fought this guy as long and as hard as they did. And even after all that, the psycho’s scores still aren’t back up. Nobody has to compete against them. There are ways in which you can say this was a loss (the messaging), but within the strict confines of competitive gaming, it was a win. If you want leaderboards that absolutely will not list objectively proven cheaters on their leaderboards, Twin Galaxies is your place. (Well, if they dumpster the rest of the pre-TGSAP scores, which I hope they eventually do.)
I very much dislike Billy but in my opinion this was a huge win for him and a massive loss for non-cheaters everywhere. About 0.1% of people will “realize the subtext of the statement he agreed to is making fun of him”. 99.9% of people will see from the official T.G. statement that his scores were reinstated. 99.9% of people are not going to spend time researching the difference between the legacy scoreboard archive and the bla bla bla. It seems Billy understands this better than T.G. In my opinion, saying T.G. won this is like saying someone with 0.1% of the vote won the election. Huge public relations win for Billy. Very disappointing for me and for many others that put time into this. On a positive note, good job again with the article Walter (it was lipstick on a pig, but it was well written).
On one hand, Billy gets away from this ordeal without trial. On the other hand, he didn’t get his scores properly reinstated (which was the point of this lawsuit), didn’t get TG to retract their statements, and this whole saga has created a whole new generation of Billy Michell critics (such as you and David Race) who are fully aware of his fraudulence and will NEVER let him live this down. I guess I can take the bad with the good.
“didn’t get TG to retract their statements”
as part of the settlement TG have to agree with Billy’s “expert” that his scores are real, they can’t talk about it going forward or publicly call him a cheater BUT they will sell mugs saying “this is not arcade” as a wink to what they really think, how spineless!
I just see lots of cope with people trying to paint this as a win for TG when its just a huge win for Billy, he got what he wanted in the end
I don’t think i’ll follow this anymore, I think that was the one chance you had to taking down Billy with all that evidence, if you had a proper Judge it would of got thrown out but now your going to have a smug Billy claiming victory and ignoring that overwhelming evidence showing he cheated
Who said TG can’t talk about Billy going forward? They already have. Check out the replies to their “statement” wall post:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/twin-galaxies/wall/12585/twin-galaxies-statement/
> In case there is confusion:
> 1. Is Billy still banned from Twin Galaxies competition?
> Yes.
> 2. Are Billy’s world records going back onto the main leaderboards?
> No.
> 3. Has the opinion of Twin Galaxies changed regarding Billy’s Donkey Kong scores?
> No.
> Twin Galaxies has no problem acknowledging that there is an expert out there that has a different opinion than the one Twin Galaxies has. We very much believe that it is important that people are aware of all the information so they can make their own judgements. If people have questions about what that expert has to say, then they can inquire with that person.
Mitchell might have “surrendered” (note: not really), but TG’s brand is tainted now. Their credibility is shot now that they have given in to this cheater.
Now that the acknowledged cheaters are back in – in any way, shape, or form, who trusts TG’s word on anything? Will legitimate players want their names associated with this brand after this?
Why is their credibility shot, though? They fought this dude for years – way longer than any other high score or speedrun tracker. And even after all that, Mr. Cheater’s scores never did go back up on the actual leaderboard.
First off, love the site. I enjoy and appreciate your work, and my words are in no way a reflection on you.
Of course, we don’t know the terms of the settlement. We don’t know exactly why TG would settle when Mitchell has been caught lying in written statements as well as a taped deposition. It’s true, we don’t know all the ins and outs of this.
But when your business, your brand, your EVERYTHING is based on legit scores and your brand is supposed to be pretty much the be-all end-all of a high score database, any inclusion of known cheaters hurts your brand.
It can be framed that it’s a f-you and a joke, but Mitchell is there. And you’re right, there will always be suckers – and they’re the ones framing the story that is getting out there.
Why did TG walk away from what should have been a slam dunk? Too much money spent? The probability of not getting the money out of Mitchell? Their attorney’s behavior? The lousy judge (That TG’s lawyer should have done his homework on her and done everything possible to get the case reassigned – or did he?) Just worn down with the case? We may never totally know.
But it’s a travesty that Mitchell is allowed to wiggle out of this. Will this enable him to continue to use lawfare to silence critics? Will he still be able to collect appearance fees from shows/conventions that obviously have no qualms about this guy being associated with them? Will he continue to take money and opportunities from players that deserve them?
With things like this, I consider the settlement a loss.
I appreciate your candor. I’ll try and address all of this as best I can in my full write-up. But yeah, we may never really know.
I do think it’s worth remembering that Billy would spin anything as a win (or at least a not-loss), and that suckers from shows and conventions would still pay him to appear anyway, regardless of the outcome.
I agree with you that the settlement is a loss for truth. It allows Billy Mitchell to generate a public perception that he prevailed. Having one’s scores “reinstated” on a “historical database” seems perfectly fine; these are very old scores why should they not be in a “historical” leaderboard?
It pains me very much that the entirely nonsensical Zyda “analysis” has to be “acknowledged” by TG even though it it does not make one iota of sense.
Sure, the technical reasons Zyda lists can cause artefacts, but not a different drawing order or the characteristic “girder finger”. Zyda claims that the finger was reproduced by Hernandez but that in an attempt to reproduce it again the whole board was destroyed. Not quite a testament to the expertise of Mr. Hernandez, if he is unable to experiment with a piece of evidence without destroying it.
I believe the claimed reproduction of a girder finger the day all pigs levitate 100m in the air.
BTW, I know it is unbearably painful but let’s just assume for a minute that Zyda’s findings had any merit. In that case, it would make sense to observe that the hardware Billy played on was so compromised (due to aging, inappropriate wiring, presence of a converter board that makes barrels roll uphill on the output, etc.) that the highscores were invalid for using hardware unfit for purpose. One could argue that some of the artefact generating faults produced the extremely unlikely blue barrel smash scores, caused general scoring issues, etc. Surely, one cannot claim that all those claimed artefact generating sources only had benign effects.
It is very sad that Billy Mitchell got this much out of the case, given how clear cut the evidence was against him and what a non-starter the Zyda “analysis” is. Mitchell can now claim he got what he wanted out of the case, that it would have been too costly to establish the “whole truth”, etc.
I hope someone (Karl?) makes a really good video that debunks the Zyda “expert” report. It should show what artefacts can be caused by the listed sources and why the observable rendering characteristics of MAME are not among them.
A video questioning Zyda’s report already exists but pointing out the Zyda used “could” a lot is not enough.
Why fight for 4 years and then give up at the finish line? They could have easily raised money for the trial. And very likely had Billy pay for their legal fees after they won. Anyway you slice this turd they gave up an easy win and now Billy to the general public seemingly gets away with a SLAPP suit, scot-free. Only way this makes sense is if they got Billy to pay all their legal fees as part of the settlement.
It’s not “very likely” Billy would have to pay legal fees. Not at all, under U.S. rules. And especially not with the crap judge they got.
But hey, maybe Billy did pay legal fees?
I agree the US legal system is garbo. But if they prove this whole lawsuit was just a farce to shut people up and had no validity, (which they have all the resources to do) I don’t see a world where legal fees aren’t awarded.
The funniest thing about this outcome is that Billy Mitchell can now brag that he has his own section of the Twin Galaxies website even though it’s actually a hall of shame consisting of him and the other asshole cheaters who ran Old Twin Galaxies. I wonder if Walter Day now regrets selling his scoreboard to Jace Hall
No TG’s credibility is not shot. In fact they may be happier than anyone about this. Erzatz Catz is right in that Mitchell was looking at an L. Let’s acknowledge what we all wish would happen: Mitchell gets tarred and feathered and has tomatoes tossed at him in public. Unfortunately the law sucks in some cases and we don’t always see people like Mitchell get the public scathing he deserves. BUT- consider what he has lost in this deal. He isn’t on TG’s boards in any way except for a screen shot. His name and legacy is tainted. This evidence will follow him to every other trial and continue to haunt him forever. His hot sauce biz and fam have cast him out. He has about 4 friends left & those are people in the same boat as him and can’t afford to abandon him anyway. Plus TG can’t recoup what Mitchell can’t pay. He has no real assets left. You’re going to be seeing the law firm that repped Mitchell end up taking him to court to get their money from him pretty soon. Settlement doesn’t mean loss. The more the news of what Mitchell had to “settle” for gets out, the more he will be marginalized. People like him don’t have shame so they won’t go away but if you keep hammering them with this evidence and people bringing it up at every chance, it will make them show their face in the light a lot less.
Well I think TG’s brand is terminally damaged, Ive certainly lost all respect for the new TG, they can go away and disappear for all I care now, they’ve certainly come out looking the fools in all this
It just seems like a colossal waste of time they spent 4 years fighting a lawsuit and just before achieving something they back down to Billy and basically give him what he wants, he can now do a glory lap to the media and go back to exactly where he was 4 years ago
Billy will also carry on suing people as in the end its worked for him again…..
This settlement just seems like TG bending over backwards to make Billy happy and TG saving some face……..the settlement only seems to benefit Billy and of course Billy doesn’t admit any wrong doing and on top of all that Billy makes TG put out a statement of rubbish about a malfunction to cover all his MAME footage which is just embarrassing
So I can’t agree with your title of Billy “Surrendering”, he never wanted to go to trial and do what hes been doing for years by forcing the other party out of money until they back down and thats what TG did in the end which makes the last 4 years completely and utterly pointless
I just don’t understand how TG didn’t completely debunk the testimony of that new expert. They seem to be saying, he has a point. It could be the most nonsense claim in all of Billy’s evidence. The TG statement is just so completely weird.
The TG statement is so strange because it’s what billy wanted it say, it’s like TG just agreed to anything to get out of the lawsuit
Notice not even in the post TG made after they didn’t say billy “cheated” just their opinion hasn’t changed….I will bet thats part of the settlement to not talk about this again or mention hes cheated
To be fair though, TG never at any point said Billy “cheated”. Similar to how they never said he used MAME. They just said the tapes were misrepresented, and that that was sufficient to strike his scores.
Yes, it is extremely puzzling that they let this nonsense “expert” opinion stand. Anyone with some knowledge of the technology involved could easily debunk the entire report.
One could also say, “In case you don’t buy the debunking, you’d have to acknowledge that according to Zyda’s findings the hardware used was severely compromised, thus being unfit for the purpose of establishing highscores to compete with those obtained under regular playing conditions.”
Both sides won some things and both sides lost some things. That’s why it’s a settlement. With everything we’ve seen, however, giving Billy even those few small wins was far more than he deserved. With all of the shenanigans Billy’s side pulled through this mess, TG was better positioned to knock down his whole house of cards than anyone has ever been, but for their own reasons which may be reasonable, they just carefully removed a few cards from the top, tipped their hat, and left.
The worst part of this to me is that it seems like Billy can use this outcome as ammo against more undeserving people in the future. I think a solid loss here would have removed him from the public eye entirely.
“The worst part of this to me is that it seems like Billy can use this outcome as ammo against more undeserving people in the future…”
If true, that’s the biggest travesty of all in all of this.
Looking forward to your future write up. Also, hoping you can bring on RTM for a post-mortem on your channel, I would be very interested to hear more about his depo.
Also question – now that the parties have settled do you think there is any chance of said depo being released publicly? Would love to hear RTM, Walter and Wiebe’s full depos. I would be happy enough with transcripts.
I’d love to get him on the horn for a Part 3 interview! Probably audio, like I’ve done before (hopefully with better audio, lol). We discussed it at one point, but agreed it would be better to wait until after the case so we could talk about it. One of many things I’d been kicking down the road that now can be done whenever I can make the time.
The Wikipedia entry for Billy Mitchell now contains “… an expert for Mitchell testified that proof that Mitchell had used emulation or modified hardware was inconclusive.”
This is so frustrating as to the uninitiated this creates the perception that reasonable doubt had been cast on the cheating allegations. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The sources of artefacts Zyda lists are surely able to distort the recording in some shape or form, but they cannot explain the characteristic drawing order differences.
Furthermore, I’d like to see Zyda’s attempt to explain away the frame contained in the overscan area. Probably a very specific combination of aged resistors and capacitors can cause a frame to be drawn that does not exist on Arcade hardware. Or the n-th generation of a video copy “could” have added it somehow. Yeah, that’s all very plausible; apologies to Mr. Zyda.
Zyda provided an opinion on behalf of billy and has proposed that malfunction could be the cause of the “anomalies.”
This means billy tacitly admits his performances are not legitimate, as a malfunctioning machine is considered modified arcade hardware.
With billy putting forth zyda as the explanation he is admitting that his scores were correctly disqualified and now he is only focused on trying to provide explanation as to how they are not legitimate.
So there is a clear admission of guilt from billy in the statement and his messaging.
as a malfunctioning machine is considered modified arcade hardware.
so no repairs are allowed?
and games with batterys well when they die that is it no more high scores allowed on that game.
also you may as well say that we can not have any high scores on any pinball game at all as it’s hard to keep them working and 100% original
Howdy everyone! Still working on that so-called “end of month” update, lol. I should really know by now that these things always take way more time than I expect. Since this is shaping up to be my longest piece yet (not counting the “Dot” series), and probably my most important as well, I’m going to take some more time to make sure I have everything the way I want it.
In the meantime, enjoy this new Karl Jobst video on Billy’s “expert” creepazoid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l1U0SON-EU
Man, lots of doomposting in this comments section. Not for nothing, but Billy’s reputation is now as a vexatious litigant and not as a competitive gamer. He’s not going for records anymore, he’s not a going concern in any community, the right people know to stay away from him, and even if he lost, he would have a meal ticket on podcasts and panels until the day he dies anyway. Yeah, it would’ve been phenomenal to see the legal system reenact the things in Michael Zyda’s Twitter likes on Billy–but lawsuits are expensive. It’s tiresome hearing the same “this is a loss, Billy can claim he won now” bleating constantly from people following the case. He’s a has-been retrogamer hot sauce salesman regardless of the outcome of the case. Let’s have a laugh instead.
I know, right?
Thank you!
Pathetic, esp. as their lawyer was possibly the cause for a settlement (inappropriate dealing with ‘witnesses’ apparently), and the removing/making inaccessible of the dispute and post dispute threads is unacceptable in terms of history and knowing what really went on. I wondered why I couldn’t access the post verdict thread anymore since a few weeks, perhaps because they got harsh criticism in that thread, or perhaps because this is their standard procedure and immediately made it inaccessible (at least to me), either way for me that is unacceptable. The real problem is that these types of guys like Mitchell need a kick in the nuts, and this way he can just explain away everything to non-experts. Most people in the world are non-experts (just like that Zyda guy is) so this is a problem. Others stated the same thing I feel: this result means I am not interested in TG at all any more.
I don’t know what to tell you. It’s not like the evidence has disappeared.
https://perfectpacman.com/evidence/
As for the dispute thread, all that was really lost was a bunch of inane commentary in between the important stuff. And even that’s been preserved, anyway.