America’s gaming failson is at it yet again. While Donkey Kong cheater Billy Mitchell continues doing interviews, lying about his fake scores being restored and saying he’s satisfied with the outcome of his failed lawsuit against legacy scorekeeper Twin Galaxies, his actions say otherwise. On March 11th, Billy and his attorneys filed new motions, pressing the court to “enforce” the terms of their confidential settlement.
At this point, Billy Mitchell has to be the most persistently insecure man alive, which if that’s a competition, I guess means he finally won something.
To some degree, we can’t say for sure exactly what’s going on with these new filings. They’re significantly redacted to remove any direct references to the content of the out-of-court disposition of their case. However, I think they do reveal some interesting observations about the nature of Billy’s observable dissatisfaction. Today, I’ll go over what can be newly inferred, both about the confidential settlement itself, and Team Billy’s grievances.
No recap for this one. Let’s just dive in.
ENFARCEMENT
We’ll start with the filings themselves. There are three of them: A motion to enforce the settlement, a motion to seal the aforementioned motion to enforce as confidential, and a notice of lodging identifying which portions of the motion are to be sealed:
As we established previously, that stamp in the corner of the first page is confirmation that these documents were acquired directly from the public court site. Any of these could disappear from that site at some point, as a previous filing had done, but thankfully we’ve got you covered. As I review these, I’m going to skip around a bit, but if you prefer to peruse the documents in the intended order, you can do so.
Sadly, it seems Manning & Kass knew how to properly redact the forbidden passages in these filings (although if you know of any dark unredaction arts I don’t, I’d be interested in what the documents have to say). But we can gather that they are alleging TG violated two conditions of the settlement, which we in the public are not allowed to know the particulars of:
The first allegation lies somewhere beneath this redaction:
Okay, so the negotiated settlement statement doesn’t seem to be the issue, but rather, something else Jace allegedly did “on or about” the same day.
Immediately after that passage, Billy’s lawyer Kristina Ross alludes to another alleged violation, relating to an email between Jace Hall and Karl Jobst:
The obscured message seems very clearly to be the email Karl showed at about 7:40 in his video titled “Billy Mitchell Lost His Lawsuit”. On the face of it, it does seem silly to redact evidence which is already in the public record. Technically, there is a standing protective order designating all discovery in this case as confidential, so if this email was acquired as part of ongoing discovery, such unnecessary redaction could be simply be a precaution to avoid being accused of violating that order. However, in her attached declaration, Ross qualifies that her exhibit of that email is “upon information and belief” “a true and correct copy” – legal speak for “We’re pretty sure this is real”. That suggests to me there was no direct discovery involved, and that they just plucked it out of Karl’s video the same way the rest of us did. So… Maybe the real goal of this particular redaction is to try to prevent the public from knowing exactly what Billy’s so upset about?
At any rate, the much-discussed Karl/Jace email reads as follows:
I’ll discuss this more in a bit, but it’s safe to say something about this message has Billy’s tits in a wringer. Recall that, soon after the exchange with Jobst, the contents of that email were posted by the Twin Galaxies account in the settlement announcement thread, in one of the very few public comments either TG or Jace have made about this situation since the settlement. This “comment posted by Defendant” would seem to be what Ms. Ross is referring to when she recaps their two grievances:
They’re also big mad about the fact that Karl published his video so soon after the TG statement, and that TG is now selling t-shirts and mugs identifying arcade and MAME transitions (even though those listings make no direct references to Billy or the score dispute), and that Karl featured these products in said video:
As we all know, Billy Mitchell is nothing if not a hypocrite. He’s been out openly poking fun at his own years-long fraud by selling “Not MAME” stickers at his appearances.
Straight from the old narcissist’s playbook: Accuse your enemies of what you yourself are doing.
Also, note that Ross erroneously refers to “the lying/cheating allegations made by Defendant”. As usual, Ms. Ross knows she’s a professional liar. The allegations were made by others, predating TG’s involvement. TG simply decided there was enough technical evidence to conclude the contested tapes could not have been produced using original, unmodified Donkey Kong hardware. Of course, Billy did cheat, and his scores had to come down, but Jace Hall bent over backwards to not say anything more inflammatory about Billy Mitchell himself that the objective evidence did not say for itself.
Ross also makes a big deal out of her estimate that it would have been about 3:30 in the morning for Karl Jobst, in Australia, at the time of this email with Jace. Thus, Ross argues, Karl and Jace must have been secretly conspiring to malign poor Billy Mitchell, supposedly in violation of the settlement:
Therefore, Plaintiff has no ability to know for certain if Mr. Hall and Mr. Jobst were communicating about the Settlement Agreement and public statement prior to January 16, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. PST. However, Plaintiff believes such communication did occur as barely an hour after this exchange, Jobst published a 10 minute, polished video discussing the case and the settlement.
Of course, Karl’s short video turnaround is proof of nothing, and Team Billy knows that. It was clear that some sort of resolution statement would be forthcoming at some point. (Technically speaking – and this is purely hypothetical – depending on the exact language of the settlement, it may not have even been a violation for Jace to tell people “Watch for a statement”, no matter how much Billy and his attorneys would want to cry otherwise.) Once people noticed that Professor Pervert’s “tEcHNiCaL aNaLySiS” was made public the morning of January 16th, all eyes were watching for that statement soon after. While I appear to be omitted from Team Billy’s current childish temper tantrum, I also posted a prompt response correcting early misinformation, which given the short turnaround, used stock jokes and memes I had laying around. Karl’s response video also used mostly stock footage, with most of the discussion centering around things that were already public before that morning (such as the initial news of a settlement), or Zyda’s post from an hour prior to TG’s statement, or things Karl could have fairly anticipated during initial script-writing (such as that TG would not restore Billy’s scores to the actual leaderboard).
I know, no reasonable person reading this cares if Jace called up Karl and outright told him on the down low “Bro, I just settled with Billy, that guy’s such a dumbass, he’s not getting his scores back, he’ll just be in some bullshit archive with his cheater friend Todd Rogers, but I’m not supposed to tell you this, so don’t say anything until it’s public.” (Since Billy’s lawyers are intentionally obtuse, I should make clear that quote was not real and was obvious parody, obviously.) There’s no doubt in my mind that Billy confided in people other than his wife and his son what the confidential terms of the settlement are. Or more plausibly, Jace probably speaks to Karl regularly, and could have given Karl vague assurances that everything would be okay, without discussing any actual settlement terms. And maybe from these conversations, Karl felt sufficiently confident to expect certain facts without Jace having done anything to violate the agreement. I mean, hell, I’m sure they discussed the then-upcoming TG merch store, which happens to include a t-shirt featuring Karl, and which doesn’t relate directly to Billy or this case. I guess Billy’s attorneys think Jace shouldn’t be speaking with anyone, anywhere, at any time, about any thing, for any reason, lest any conversation be wrapped into their unhinged litany of character assassination.
Oh, and as for Karl being up at 3:30am local time when the statement was released, that might sound like a big deal to anyone who doesn’t know who Karl is. However, anyone who frequents Karl’s Discord knows him to be a relentless night owl, posting at all ungodly hours of the U.S. afternoon.
As an experiment, I took the extra step of looking through the last few months of Karl’s publicly timestamped Twitter activity, to see if I could demonstrate his nocturnality. Note that my Twitter experience shows everything everyone does in my own time zone (U.S. Pacific). In other words, no matter where in the world anyone else is, their posts display a time consistent with my time zone, and not theirs. This is why someone else’s screenshot, or a Wayback Machine capture, can show you a different time-of-day for something than you see on actual Twitter. It’s also why, no matter where someone else is in the world, if they posted something “2m” ago, it displays for me as two minutes ago per my local time, and not from a couple hours ago (Hawaii) or hours in the future (everywhere else).
Brisbane is currently seventeen hours ahead of me, which means that if Karl was running on Dolly Parton hours, I’d see timestamps between 4pm and 12am. And if he were operating at or around 3am, I’d see tweets in the vicinity of 10am – again, my time. (Admittedly, our recent local change to daylight savings time could affect these results, but only by one hour at the most.)
I think you see where this is going. What follows are the timestamps, as displayed in my time zone, for all of Karl’s tweets and replies reaching back in to the Jirard Khalil stuff in December. Let’s see how many fall into the range of the Australian graveyard shift range, which would display for me between 5am and 1pm:
1:52 AM · Mar 15, 2024 ;
7:55 AM · Mar 5, 2024 ;
12:39 PM · Feb 23, 2024 ;
6:41 AM · Feb 13, 2024 ;
6:11 AM · Feb 1, 2024 ;
6:33 AM · Jan 18, 2024 ;
9:49 AM · Jan 17, 2024 ;
9:37 AM · Jan 17, 2024 ;
7:28 AM · Jan 17, 2024 ;
7:07 AM · Jan 17, 2024 ;
7:05 AM · Jan 17, 2024 ;
6:59 AM · Jan 17, 2024 ;
6:57 AM · Jan 17, 2024 ;
6:54 AM · Jan 17, 2024 ;
9:17 AM · Jan 12, 2024 ;
9:16 AM · Jan 12, 2024 ;
6:03 AM · Jan 12, 2024 ;
4:13 AM · Jan 12, 2024 ;
4:00 AM · Jan 12, 2024 ;
8:59 PM · Jan 4, 2024 ;
6:47 PM · Dec 29, 2023 ;
10:45 AM · Dec 29, 2023 ;
10:54 AM · Dec 24, 2023 ;
9:58 AM · Dec 23, 2023 ;
10:19 AM · Dec 20, 2023 ;
10:30 AM · Dec 20, 2023 ;
10:26 AM · Dec 20, 2023 ;
5:55 AM · Dec 18, 2023 ;
5:40 AM · Dec 18, 2023 ;
7:02 PM · Dec 17, 2023 ;
6:48 PM · Dec 17, 2023 ;
8:18 AM · Dec 17, 2023 ;
8:14 AM · Dec 17, 2023 ;
2:22 PM · Dec 15, 2023 ;
11:32 AM · Dec 13, 2023 ;
10:51 AM · Dec 13, 2023 ;
10:49 AM · Dec 13, 2023 ;
10:31 AM · Dec 13, 2023
Clearly the answer is that Karl Jobst is psychic. He knew a month in advance that Billy was going to agree to an out-of-court settlement where Billy’s cheated scores wouldn’t get reinstated to the real leaderboard, and that Billy would eventually agree to an announcement at 9am U.S. Pacific time on some day in January. Thus, Karl knew to fake insomnia for years, and to routinely refer to this pretend insomnia in conversation, so that his middle-of-the-night update on a major story he’s been covering since 2020 would all appear plausible.
All of this bellyaching over Karl’s independent video should give you an indication of what Billy is really upset about. His victory lap of lies didn’t go the way he wanted. He got slapped with a hilarious Twitter community note. He thought his advance knowledge of the settlement statement would let him get his bullshit narrative out before the truth, and he’s super-butthurt that Karl Jobst was on his ass for it. And while he would love to take it out on Karl directly, in the meantime, he’s taking his frustration out on Jace.
Getting back to the new filings, all the juicy stuff in the attached exhibits is blacked out. We can see the main body of the confidential settlement is eleven pages (with two of those pages both bearing the number ten), along with three unnumbered pages of possible bonus content. Billy’s attorneys are also asking the court to order TG to reimburse their attorney fees and filing fees for this motion, to the tune of $9,120.
WHATEVER REMAINS
Okay, so obviously, we can only speculate as to what lies underneath any specific redaction. In some cases, the length of a passage dictates what it can and can not be. Take this for instance:
It’s not clear whether the unidentified concept being protected is in relation to just the Motion to Seal, or both the filings as a pair. However, if it was just the Motion to Seal, it would make a lot of sense for the redacted words to be “the confidentiality”, given that there certainly was a confidentiality clause in the settlement. (It would be funny if a proofreader, assuming M&K even have one, later saw the word “the” and felt that should be blacked out too.) That would also make sense in light of this passage we saw earlier:
“To remedy the Defendant’s breach of”… something… “by posting the term of the Settlement Agreement”. Again, it would make a lot of sense for that word to be “confidentiality”, and that word would fit perfectly in the space being redacted.
I’m going to circle back to this point of confidentiality in a moment, but there’s something else I find very interesting about that passage, and this filing overall. Notice how, in that last paragraph, Billy’s attorneys are not just asking for attorney fees, like they do with every other motion they file. They’re asking for attorneys fees pursuant to some censored clause of the settlement. That’s not some sneaky bit of unnecessary redaction, either. A later passage makes it plainly obvious that the settlement “unambiguously” assigns costs incurred in settlement enforcement:
Apparently it’s standard in legal filings to use a dollar sign as a word, like it’s fucking TikTok or something?
But that brings us to what I find so interesting. Billy’s attorneys are openly identifying the fact that they’re seeking reimbursement for attorney fees, and the amount thereof. But at no point can we see them asking for damages for breach of contract. They’re asking for the contract, as it was written, to be enforced:
Lest you think I’m reading too much into things, Ross herself is very clear that they’re just seeking to enforce the existing terms of the settlement, and that it’s not the court’s job to impose “material terms” of its own devising:
There is something in the settlement Billy Mitchell believes he is entitled to. Furthermore, we can also deduce that this contested item is not a matter of Jace failing to fulfill a proactive obligation, which they now seek to compel action on, but rather that something Jace did which allegedly breached the agreement. See here, how Ross refers to there being “no way to claw back the breach”:
“As there is no way to claw back the breach”… perhaps again… “of confidentiality”.
The final clue we are given comes from that same excerpt. Billy’s side is asking for permission to publish a selective passage from the settlement, and for TG to publish a clarification… of some sort.
Knowing how mired in malarkey Billy Mitchell, his attorneys, and most everyone associated with his legal defense have been throughout this entire process, I don’t expect any of these allegations against Jace and TG to be anything more than hot air. But still, I can’t prove there’s no merit, because I can’t even say or demonstrate for certain what the contested terms of the settlement even are. However, I do think we can come to an educated guess. On three occasions, Ross refers to the email from Jace to Karl, shortly after the settlement announcement was first published. This email is also included as a redacted “Exhibit C”, reinforcing its importance.
Let’s take a look at that email again:
That third question feels too subjective to be the subject of a breach of contract claim. Exactly what is the opinion that hasn’t changed? And why would Jace be barred from giving a single word reference to that opinion? Also, it’s doubtful that Jace Hall would have agreed to a prohibition on referring to a previous opinion on Billy’s dispute scores, and even if somehow Jace had, he would never have violated that prohibition so promptly. If that were the case, we would have just never heard anything from Jace on the subject ever again.
That leaves us with two, more objective questions and answers. And look at that, Team Billy are crying about two claimed grievances! Throw in the confidentiality stuff, and I think we can make a reasonable assumption – that Billy is claiming some or all of the following:
- That the settlement requires TG to unban Billy;
- That the settlement requires TG to reinstate Billy to the actual main leaderboard, and not the historic archive;
- That Jace’s one-word answers constitute discussion of the terms of the settlement.
The third item is a bit interesting, in that any reasonable person should see a distinction between discussing settlement terms as settlement terms, and simply stating facts about your high score leaderboard which, throughout your tenure, has always promoted transparency above all else. TG is certainly not required to publicly specify which gamers are banned from submission, but they’ve always chosen not to hide that information. I’m sure, at this point, Billy would love for TG to be functionally paralyzed by court intervention, but I doubt Jace would have agreed to anything that would explicitly bind his stewardship in that way.
Lest anyone make the mistake of thinking that Billy Mitchell finally chose this moment to not be completely full of shit, there’s no way the settlement says “TG has to unban Billy” and “Billy’s scores have to be on the main TG leaderboard”, and then Jace said “Fuck it, I’ll piss everything away by doing the exact opposite of what I agreed to”. Which means, what we’re really talking about is semantics. In other words, the settlement may include stuff like “TG agrees to refer to Billy’s scores somewhere on the website”, or “TG does not rule out the possibility of unbanning Billy Mitchell at some future date, should circumstances change” (i.e., if Billy finally apologized to the community for cheating).
We should be clear about one thing: If Billy wanted a certain outcome, it was his responsibility to ensure it was reasonably reflected in the text of the settlement contract. If TG said “We agree to unban Billy effective immediately”, and then refused to do so, that’s on TG. But if Billy expected vague allusions to be legally binding, then he’s either an idiot, or an asshole trying to scare people with legal threats as usual. And any attempts to leverage the power of the court to enforce hazy intimations the way he chooses to semantically interpret them is yet more abuse of the legal system. (Surprise, surprise, crazed narcissists never know when to let it go.)
Furthermore, as to the question of whether Jace managed to pull some sort of leaderboard switcheroo on Mr. “These Donkey Kong scores mean absolutely everything to me”, it is literally impossible for Billy Mitchell to have not known what he was agreeing to in that regard. Or as I argued in my ironically intended “end-of-lawsuit” update:
There is no way in this universe that Billy Mitchell did not know the difference between the real high score leaderboard, and some alternative listing. This guy, of all people, knows the difference. He never would have agreed to have his scores listed on some special, separate page, titled “Donkey Kong scores which look like MAME but which the player says was arcade, and which are probably bogus”. Billy likely had to sit and mull over the offer for a while. “Is this the fake win I can run with?”
As for the passage Billy wants published, it may very well be one of these vague suggestions, perhaps alluding to some interest of amicability between the parties going forward. Another possibility is that the agreement included conciliatory language from both sides – i.e., “We agree the other party did nothing wrong, and the other party agrees we did nothing wrong” – and now Billy is opportunistically attempting to get half and only half of that equation published.
WAS THIS THE PLAN?
Put yourself in Billy Mitchell’s shoes for a moment. In other words, let’s say you’re an insanely jealous psychopath who sucks at almost every video game ever made and who enjoys claiming other people’s accolades and bullying others to cover for your deep insecurities. In particular, your legal threats against Twin Galaxies and Jace Hall have fallen flat. Your publicity plan has gone horribly awry, and now you’re facing a jury trial where you know in your heart of hearts you’re going to get absolutely fucking destroyed. Despite your public bravado, privately, you’d be willing to eat your own nasty-ass underwear if it could help you get out of the big fight.
Obviously, a settlement which you could declare as a victory is preferable. If you can get the person you’re trying to bully to be sick of constantly dealing with your horseshit, maybe you can get them to go along with calling off the fight. But you’re still afraid everyone will laugh at you and see that you caved without getting what you wanted.
And so, you have an idea. A new plan! What if, instead of settling to end the legal battle, you settle to shift it to another venue? You intentionally agree to noncommittal assurances, intending to change the battle from one of MAME transition screens and red joysticks to one of whether a given word means this or that? So instead of facing a jury, all you have to do is bamboozle a judge or two. And now, you can do the only thing that’s ever really worked for you – unwaveringly insist on your bogus claims and interpretations until you eventually exhaust everyone and get your way. Plus, this gets you past that pesky civil trial deadline that’s fast approaching, and you do so love endlessly kicking the consequences can down the road.
Of course, hypothetically speaking, there’s this pesky matter that your attorneys took the case on contingency. And given how much time and work they’ve sunk into this video game nonsense, they’re probably just as sick of you as the opposition is. They certainly don’t want to keep working for free into perpetuity, over semantic arguments that likely won’t go anywhere. But that’s okay – nobody needs to know if you begin paying them directly for their time.
Breaking from our hypothetical narrative, all of this does make sense, from the fact that Billy loves harebrained schemes that bring him attention, to his well-established disdain for evidence, all the way to what motivation his attorneys could have for drawing this nonsense out further. I’m sure Manning & Kass saw this as a juicy contingency case way back when they thought they could extract an easy settlement. But a couple years in, they started giving away their desperation by seeking ludicrous sums as compensation for their time. Surely, after getting bludgeoned nonstop by damning testimony, they knew this case was dead weight. But if they could help arrange a settlement and ensuing semantic scuffle on the terms that they get directly paid by Billy for their time in doing so, then sure, they’d be happy to keep the ball rolling as long as the money keeps coming in.
Again, this is just more speculation, but I think Ellrod and company’s relatively non-exorbitant request for eighteen hours worth of compensation, with no further damages, speaks to this change. They’ll get paid either way. What do they care? Ironically, such an arrangement could incentivize these slimeballs to prolong Billy’s struggle for fake vindication, which could be why in their exhibit they casually sprinkled in yet more negative public commentary about their client for the judge to read:
Oh, and speaking of money, I would be remiss if I did not point out that Billy’s attorneys also filed for a refund of the $81,225 undertaking in late February:
No word on whether the refund has been fully executed. So strange though, how upset they are about an email from January 16th, that they would wait so long, perhaps until after that refund, to try to reopen the case again.
Folks who have followed my updates know I haven’t been a big fan of Judge Wendy Chang. But barring some shocking twist of terminology buried in the confidential settlement, if this really is just about semantic differences, I honestly doubt Chang will grant any of this. Remember, she was reportedly happier than anyone that this case was supposedly over. Throughout pre-trial, she bent over backwards looking for excuses not to intervene, even when she should have. Thanks to that inaction, she gets to deal with Mr. Mullet’s horseshit one more time. Billy Mitchell and his associates are unreasonable people. And shockingly enough, it turns out that placating unreasonable people doesn’t make them reasonable; it only makes them bolder.
DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
When the reality of the out-of-court agreement settled in (pun always intended), I took a lot of time and care to make the case for why the settlement was a good thing. And I didn’t lie to you. I genuinely believed, and still do, that it was an overall positive, for all the reasons I described. And I still believe that a jury trial likely would not have brought the satisfaction and finality many were expecting and hoping it would.
But I also knew that there were valid grounds to criticize both the known terms of the settlement, and the choice by TG to settle in the first place. I didn’t make much of an effort to acknowledge or detail those grounds, since I knew convincing folks of the benefits of settling would be an uphill climb from the start. So many others were asserting why this outcome was so terrible, and they were free to make the case they wanted. But I felt someone should have the courage to stand up and say “This is a good thing actually, and here’s why”.
But there are definitely potential downsides to literally any agreement with Billy Mitchell, no matter how legally-binding. And perhaps, we’re seeing that in action.
To be clear, I’m not faulting Jace for this. Unless Billy got the satisfaction he wanted, he was going to be a shithead to Jace whether there was a settlement or not. Billy doesn’t truly give a shit whether his name is on this leaderboard or that. He doesn’t want to be unbanned so he could submit scores again. (As if anything he submitted would get past TGSAP.) He just wants the declaration. He wants people to bow and kiss his ring.
To anyone who still thinks Billy Mitchell “won” the lawsuit, I present this latest maneuver as Exhibit A to the contrary. He lost, and more importantly, he knows that everyone else knows that he lost. Objectively, Billy walked away without his scores being restored, and without being unbanned, no matter what angle he’s trying to weasel now. Sure, being the appreciator of knowledge that I am, I’d love to have access to any portion of the settlement, even if it is a self-serving excerpt selected by Billy himself. But I would not be particularly swayed by Billy Mitchell’s ability to tease out one isolated sentence of his choosing which he thinks he can frame as proof of a secret win.
It’s easy to say Billy never took any settlement seriously, that his plan all along was to negotiate in bad faith and attempt to ambush TG on legal semantics. But I still think there’s another, much more hilarious possibility here. Imagine Billy Mitchell smugly sitting at his computer on January 16th, thinking he really did win – relatively speaking, of course. He knows he didn’t get the real reinstatement he wanted, but maybe in his narcissism he convinced himself he really could sell TG’s historical archive as a victory. Imagine Billy sending Jace Hall a text message of reconciliation: “No hard feelings, I’m glad we were able to work things out.” And then Billy saw Karl Jobst’s video, and fumed. And then he saw the Twitter community note, and raged. And then, perhaps, he read through my detailed analysis of how badly he got played by Jace, and seethed the whole way through. And he realized he had to get his lawyers back on the line, because even he can’t lie to himself about how badly he embarrassed himself on this one.
Hey, we can only dream, right?
Meanwhile, thank you for reading as always. And stay tuned, I guess. Maybe, one day, this bullshit will actually end.
Thanks very much for the write-up, ersatz_cats. I have to agree, this petition to the court is the equivalent of Mitchell announcing on Twitter, “listen up, fanboys – I actually lost” – except his Twitter is still “private.” Can’t even read his “victory lap” announcement for chuckles and he community note along with it. I guess it’s time for TMZ to take down that interview with all of the lies that Bill packed into it, being “satisfied” and “relieved” with the settlement and “the way the history of me and many others for that matter has been restored and is moving forward.”
Looks like Bill was hoping to repeat his Guinness experience where he trumpeted the reinstatement and spun a glorious narrative about being fully exonerated thanks to Guinness’ thorough investigation & new eyewitness testimony versus the craven horse-trading that took place between lawyers and not a cent to Bill.
Like with the Guinness announcement, he probably fantasized that he’d have complete editorial spin-control as news outlets parroted his self-congratulatory reinstatement tweet and Twin Galaxies’ confusing announcement, and he’s pissed that the gaming community had their BS meter turned up to 11 and has become significantly wiser to his antics after the Guinness experience. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
Have to agree CC. It was all going swimmingly for GBF for about 5 mins after his “victory” announcement until those pesky kids pulled up in the Mystery Machine and rained on his online parade. It’s one of the positive things to come out of this, Mitchell is no longer given a free rein to spout his BS. And boy, does he not like it!!
I saw him doing the celebration lap on Twitter. I saw the knee-jerk reaction from low tier gaming reporters simply stating “Billy was vindicated!”. Then I saw them being shamed. I saw Billy being shamed. The celebrations fizzled out and the laughter and mockery came out in full force. Then Billy went dark. In my humble opinion, he did not enjoy at all being chumpatized.
Once again this spoiled, entitled, egotistical BRAT is wasting the valuable time of the court system to continue his delusional hopes that the GIFT of a settlement to which he agreed to can now be overturned to his financial favour. After four years of throwing more people under the bus than can easily be recollected, and after hundreds if not thousands of social media posts and videos that prove beyond ALL doubt both reasonable and not-to-reasonable that he did NOT play on original DK hardware, here we go into “Round Two” of his collective BS antics.
FACT – TG still has yet to re-add his scores to the primary database, so EVERYONE from the gaming world so inclined who is aware of his baseless claims can make that determination on their own easily enough. Thus TG issuing a one-word response to this effect is NOT violating that “confidential” element of the agreement.
HOW can you violate something “confidential” when the very presence of the data involved, or lack/reclassification thereof, is publicly available ??
HOW can TG confirming…via one word…that their stance has not changed violate ANYTHING ?? Their stance was already public and published knowledge. Re-confirming it…again, via one word…cannot POSSIBLY violate any “confidentiality” when it becomes crystal clear in short order that this is the case and remains so merely by looking at the TG website and the LACK of actions taken in support of that BRAT from Florida.
And finally, TG never allowing his scores in the primary database again…ever. Same concept here, and already stated within TG’s OWN RULES in the 1st Book of Records as published by Walter Day. This is not only public and published knowledge but has been a policy of TG since before it’s late 1990’s re-emergence.
Billy, in a nutshell, is saying…even though it is painfully obvious to all but a dullard with an IQ of below 50 that TG has not changed its stance on me, I still think they should be blocked from telling everyone again.
And MEANWHILE this jackass…once again…is starting his litigous antics because at this point in his sorry life this is all that he has left with respect to gaming…a “Hail Mary” approach for as long as he remaining alive and breathing, because his massive ego allows him to do no less than that.
Even athletic luminaries like Lance Armstrong eventually had NO choice but to admit to their legacy of lying…but NOT this narcissitic, egomaniacal spoiled BRAT.
Think about it…the man has WASTED the past four years of his entire life…roughly 8% of his entire existence on this planet…in court and drafting legal motions over a freaking Donkey Kong score, never mind his spending ten whole days away from his family before a Thanksgiving JUST so he could play the pattern game “Pacman” again for the umpteenth time for NO other reason than to lay claim to some feeble “first” which is not EVEN nominally more difficult than getting a base “perfect Pacman” score, something about a dozen other gamers have already done…some several times, in fact.
You can almost here the legendary Fred Rogers saying to his audience “Can you spell ‘P-A-T-H-E-T-I-C’ ? I knew you could !!”
That’s about as thorough of an ass-beating we’ll see on this. Nicely done, RTM.
So this will come with wordings technicality in settlement ?
Might as well settle “we pretend this never happened” with both side claim nothing post nothing no historical database and winning parade LOL
I believe it, but would also find it absolutely insane if Billy is trying to claim he and his scores need to be reinstated/and or unbanned. If possible, Jace needs to file for a new judge or something before this now also snowballs like last time. Billy’s quest will only continue until a judge puts him in his place.
Speaking of judges, if Chang stays, I cannot wait to see what she has to say about all of this. Maybe this absolutely pathetic and blatantly frivolous claim from billy and his team will finally make her put on the ol robe&glasses and do her damn job.
I hope she learned a valuable lesson from this, she did a poor job handling the case because she didn’t want to do her job properly, and now she has to do even more work because she didn’t want to read words and finally cut the head off the snake.
Just when you think this damn guy can’t get any worse, well..
It’s nearly unbelievable that he’s been allowed and has gotten away with being the irredeemable scumbag he is for so long. The trouble he’s caused so many people, the ill-gotten gains he’s received, if one believes in any sort of karma, he has a bigger payload coming than likely possible for any one person to handle and he deserves it.
A few more tidbits that Billy fails to consider.
1st – technically speaking, with the sole exception of live scores achieved at TG-sanctioned events such as his original 874K on DK, none of his subsequent scores should be accepted as none of his taped submissions were accompanied by a “Player Submission Agreement” form, which TG ignored (self included) because TG had always shown a double standard towards this jackass.
2nd – ever see an old sign that was posted in a place of business by the management that stated “We reserve the right to refuse to service anyone at any time for any reason” ? Usually this was posted in places like bars/pubs/taverns, but the point is that TG is a service provider, just like any business, and the implied covenant is that in exchange for validating your score TG would include it within the confines of the database (UNLESS scores are removed in accordance with TG rules). Well, TG no longer validates his performances and therefore no covenant agreement remains in place.
3rd – and in addition to point two, add to that the fact that he again never submitted the accompanying “Player Submission Agreement” form and that’s all she wrote.
There is a huge difference between TG not including Billy’s scores and, citing an example, the MLB excluding recognition of Pete Rose’s scores because Pete actually DID all of those things in accordance with MLB rules and only his gambling is blocking them from being recognized. BILLY, on the other hand, clearly did not play on original unmodified DK hardware regardless of what that QUACK Zyda said.
Regardless of what happens with this latest legal Hail Mary, we ALL know what is going to happen years from now when Billy passes on…he will most likely make pre-arrangements to have “Player of the Century” etched onto his tombstone because his massive ego will allow for nothing less. He will take The Great Lie into the afterlife with him, if such can happen, and leave onto the mortal coil The Great Lie for anyone to see for generations to come.
Well maybe the main TG leaderboard should wipe all scores done under the OLD rules.
And open it up to all banned players to post an score under the NEW rules.
As for Donkey Kong in TG the rules changed many times over the years.
On what needs to be done with the video for one Direct feed was allowed now it’s not.
Rules about repair parts / what official rom / board set must be used / etc.
And the rules need to updates to cover stuff like free play buttons / card swipe systems / DBA / if you are allowed to us tokens as the unmodified hardware uses coins not tokens and are not allowed to change the coinage dip settings.
Also add some stuff like yes you can use an UPS unit on the main power plug.
Alternately, people could — and this might be kind of crazy, or even impossible for you to comprehend, but hear me out — NOT CHEAT.
You get guys like this scumbag that get to game the system and cheat because he’s palsy-walsy with Walter or he later owns a piece of TG, for years of recognition and profit. Then you get guys like Bill Carlton killing themselves to do it right and being foiled by bad hardware.
Yep or Steve Wiebe spending hours in his garage legitimately trying to beat Mitchell’s Save state generated “World Record”.
Mitchell’s actions make a mockery of all the gamers doing it the right way.
It stinks
Sometimes there aren’t enough feet in the world to kick someone’s ass as much as they desperately need it.
That’s the other part of this that really stinks. Steve Wiebe busted his hump to get his scores, only to have them swept away via BM’s (haha) cheating, then reinstated, then challenged indirectly in court. This entirely thorough article doesn’t even mention the guy whose supremely great gameplay became the very thing that caused BM to become the ridiculous tempest that he is today. At least he’s not legally on the receiving end of this nonsense.
I wonder where all the people who called the settlement a gigantic indisputable W for Billy and an L for Twin Galaxies are right now. Billy certainly doesn’t seem to be feeling much like a winner at the moment.
KLOV is quite silent after originally trying to do a big victory lap for their Lord Billy.
Billy Mitchell, “The King of Con”, “The Guru of Grift”, “The Scoundrel of Scam” , The gamer that put The “Bam” in the world “Bamboozel” strikes again.
How long will this next court date be dragged on for? Only a grade “A” MORON would believe it will take place on May 30th.
Postponement is guarenteed.
Billy’s lawsuit are just meant to harass people seeing as his criminal lawfirm does his dirty work for free.
Billy and his lawyer need to be put down like rabid animals at this point
“Billy is a great guy. I know he would never cheat because I met him at a convention and he shook my hand.”
– Actual testimonial from some idiot on BYOAC.
I believe Jace confirmation of ‘YES’ ‘Still banned’ in the main leader-board is the whole issue here , since those are basically the basis of Karl’s Video,your posts and the twitter community note, for whatever such confirmation break the settlement is another question
If its the same judge then god only help us, she has no clue whats going on and her relief when a settlement was reached showed how little bearing or care she had for the case
So knowing her she’ll probably agree with Billy
On the other hand I don’t really care at this point, Jace chucked everyone under the bus by giving in at the last moment and making Billy believe he “won”
and exactly what we all thought would happen, has happened: Billy is just going round threatening others claiming all his scores are legit and the other side had no evidence to say otherwise (along with his “expert” witness)
I understand some rudimentary points of law, but one thing I wonder at this point is what, if any effect the settlement might have on Mitchell’s suit against Karl Jobst. Help/hurt/nothing?
It’s very unlikely to have an impact due to the difference in US/Australian law.
The only way stuff could change is if the settlement presents new facts that were previously unknown.
“A subpoena’s a subpoena. He would be required to testify.”
An Australian court cannot force an American to do anything.
Thanks to the criminal activity…..er …..uh…..I mean…..”heroic efforts”….. of Tri-Farce, I’m sure both of Billy discovered plaques will now be proudly displayed at the IVGHF for all to see.
Any word on these plaques? I’m sure Gerry Byrum is most eager to put these plaques on display for all to see since Tri-Farce planted and faked…….er I mean…..”discovered” them.
What’s the word with these plaques.
It took a couple months, but we now have TG’s formal response to Billy’s motion to enforce. These are hot off the press, liberated from the LA court paywall. I’m gonna wait to do a new full update until after the May 30th hearing.
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-16-TG-Opposition-to-motion-to-enforce.pdf
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-16-TG-Declaration-of-Jace-Hall-enforce.pdf
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-16-TG-Declaration-of-David-Tashroudian-enforce.pdf
Could not be more clear what Billy is upset about eh?
Yet more docs! Even through the redaction, I can see Billy’s attorneys doing their usual hard spin cycle. I’ll go over all the deets after the hearing.
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-22-Billy-Reply-in-support-of-motion-to-enforce.pdf
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-22-Billy-Declaration-of-William-Mitchell-enforce.pdf
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-22-Billy-Declaration-of-Krsitina-Ross-enforce.pdf
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-22-Billy-Objection-to-evidence-enforce.pdf
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-22-Billy-Notice-of-lodging-enforce.pdf
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-22-TG-Reply-in-support-of-motion-to-seal-enforce.pdf
And we have a ruling! Unfortunately, Wendy O Koopa struck again. Despite there being no apparent reference to Billy being unbanned in the settlement (or else such a provision would have been enforced), the judge ruled that Jace simply answering a question as to whether Billy is unbanned violated confidentiality. This is dumb, for a few reasons I’ll detail in the next update (to come soon).
Aside from Billy’s side getting half of the attorney fees they asked for, Billy has been given permission to publish two passages from the settlement. That’s it. That’s all he won today. But we know who we’re talking about. I’m sure he’ll spin this as some major victory.
Anyway, here are the docs (including the “Certificate of Mailing” for all you completionists). Like I said, I’ll break this all down soon:
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Billy-vs-TG-California-2024-05-30-Court-2-Minute-order-enforce.pdf
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Billy-vs-TG-California-2024-05-30-Court-1-Certificate-of-mailing-enforce.pdf
damn .. I feel bad for Jace, he might regret do settlement by now
I’m sure he’s still thrilled to have the lawsuit (for the most part) behind him. As for the attorney fees, it’s still way cheaper than going to trial. And who knows, he may even be satisfied paying that out in exchange for the privilege of making clear Billy is still banned.
It’s interesting that Mitchell still didn’t publish the settlement clause the judge allowed him to reveal (which is what I assume you are waiting for before making your next post about the enforcement ruling). This makes me suspect that he doesn’t actually want to publish it. He wants to ambush Karl Jobst’s defence with it in the Australian trial. Based on comments that have transpired from the courtroom, I am guessing it contains language that specifies conditions under which his submitted scores may be considered – which he will twist the meaning of in order to claim he is not banned as long as they are possible to meet at all, even if he never intends to. He wants to be able to argue he is not banned, or even that he has never been, without Jobst having a response at the ready.
That’s exactly what I was waiting for – either for Billy to publish, or to confirm he has no intention of doing so. I’m gonna get started on the next update after GDQ. (I already gave myself a head start on the writing.)
If there were stated conditions for unbanning, they’d have to be pretty extreme. Jace wasn’t going to willingly surrender his ability to administrate TG. And what’s funny is, even if Billy was unbanned, his scores would have to go through TGSAP, and honestly there’s no way the community would allow anything of his through. More likely, it’s a statement like “Sure, I guess it’s possible Billy could one day be unbanned, if enough conditions are met”, which is basically true of anyone. Hell, Jace probably would’ve unbanned Billy in 2018 if Billy had just admitted he had cheated. But you are correct, Billy loves preying on bystanders who don’t really know what’s going on – and that includes judges.
I wouldn’t worry about Karl, though. Billy is absolutely sunk it that case, for many reasons, including the fact that Jace confirmed in the filings that Billy is banned. And unlike under U.S. rules, Billy won’t win by dragging everything out to force a settlement.
well some people think that TG should unban all and make any one use the new system.
Also move most of the scores off the main board to an OLD rules board.
The DK rules have changed over the years and direct feed is not allowed any more.
Also can you even use an UPS on an game?
Are you allowed to even do battery repairs on any board? or under hardware rules you are not allowed and all games with battery over X years old have to be ruled no more scores?
BIlly is slick in how he filed this motion to “Enforce settlement.” Basically, if he thinks Twin Galaxy did not comply with the settlement agreement he would need to file a motion called “Breach of settlement.” A Breach motion basically means Twin Galaxy violated the terms of the settlement and therefore the case is RE-OPENED. Now billy doesnt want the case reopened because he will be destoryed at trial. So he files a made up motion basically saying, “Hey Judge the settlement is the settlement so pleace make them comply.” A Settlement agreement is basically a NEW Contract. If someone violates the contract you sue for breach which means whole new trial.