Game champion threatens to sue records website that disallowed his precious Donkey Kong score

I was wondering who wears a hoodie with a jacket and tie and then I realised it was his hair!

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Or he might rent it - like his jacket, perhaps?

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I’m guessing the stars and stripes clothing accessories is an attempt to appeal to a certain demographic known for avoiding reality.

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This asshole again. Jesus.

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Was gonna say–what I really want to know is how someone turns their hair into a hoodie!

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Christ, what an asshole.

… and his best buddy was his sole witness for most of his records.

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I would like to hear what a “real lawyer” would say about this case. There certainly seems to be something fishy about it, but I can’t frame it in legal terms.

It seems to me the only remedy he should be allowed to ask for, is to make another attempt, and if it is good enough, have it count. Which is already available to him. For him to get his wish, the court would need to get into the video game adjudication business, and overrule the ruling already issued. My understanding is that judges are typically loathe to do that sort of thing without a very good reason.

(That he was able to spin his celebrity into some kind of mall signage, doesn’t impact the public good one way or the other.)

He could afford to open an arcade but not put any actual games it?

Was he afraid someone would beat his score or something?

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Odd, maybe it was a legal issue (not having Donkey Kong).

Does he still own the fried chicken joint in Hollywood, FL?

I think I have standing to sue Billy Mitchell for that tie

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I don’t think he will win the case. :thinking:

If he doesn’t win his case he can always find work as Peter Dinklage’s stunt double. I hear they’re coming out with Underdog 2: Game of Bones in the near future. /s

That’s the “malice” part of Constitutional Malice.

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I tried to watch this movie once, but couldn’t get past the first 20 minutes.

Like, I’m a pretty big nerd, but there are limits to my nerddom.

I’ve got a real lawyer I talk to every day and they didn’t think the idea of suing Twin Galaxies was farcical. Basically Twin Galaxies has made themselves responsible for keeping high scores. But a judge isn’t going to get into judging video game high scores. A judge is going to look at whether Twin Galaxies takes reasonable steps to ensure fairness and whether they targeted Mitchell out of malice rather than because of things related to the video games.

If it turned out Twin Galaxies didn’t actually seriously try to figure out who had the high scores, but it was all some kickback scheme where they take a cut of Twitch profits from people who they promote as having the highest score, then they’d actually have some legal liability for that (assuming they passed themselves off falsely as an accurate source of information). But I’m extremely sure that’s not the case.

I think MItchell would need to produce some fairly extraordinary evidence that the process was unfair. I also think there’s no chance of that happening, and Mitchell’s lawyer should have explained that.

ETA: I’m only saying this stuff because I feel like people tend to see society as sort of a lawless place where people don’t really have responsibility for their actions. You do not have an obligation to make a video game high score site, and if you could, if you wanted, make a site that just had your friend’s high scores on it. But if you choose to convince other people that you are actually a video game high score site and work to make people think it’s accurate, people will rely on that, and you have a responsibility to those people. That said, I think Twin Galaxies knows this, feels that responsibility, and takes it seriously (probably more seriously than most people take anything).

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It picks up pretty well once they get into the competition and establish Billy Mitchell’s character. Suffice it to say that the high scores he achieved in this movie were sketchy and questionable enough that I fully believe he could cheat his way to another one.

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Aw, that’s too bad.

21:01 is where the real action kicks in!

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I’d be shocked if there was any direct right(the closest thing would be learning that the Guiness Book of World Records is considered a ‘Public Accomodation’ for the purposes of not being allowed to violate the ADA or discriminate against protected classes); but I’d actually be quite curious to hear an expert opinion on whether any of the more complex rights and torts and stuff that I don’t understand might be created by publicly awarding someone and then yanking the award with strong implications(or outright statements) that it’s because of cheating.

If they just went with ‘nobody cares about your Kong game, award not worth even retaining in the archives’ that would seem to leave him without a leg to stand on, unless they promised archival service that’s simply not gauranteed.

If, though, the awarding and un-awarding processes have procedures and standards of proof that are well defined thereight be an implicit obligation to not deviate from them in a specific case; and specifically nuking someone for cheating could possibly be some sort of defamatory, especially if they skipped normal procedures for verification before doing so anyway.

My suspicion is that the court will not be amused(except perhaps in a ‘laughing at the litigant’ sort of way) or sympathetic; but it’s at least conceivable that Guiness took on certain obligations when they awarded him, depending on their procedures for doing so.

This whole time I’ve been thinking about Twin Galaxies and not about Guiness. Suing them seems like total madness to me. This may be Twin Galaxy’s first time around the block, and they may not have a lot of money for lawyers. Guiness has undoubtedly been sued over world records hundreds of times and has lawyers who know the case law on the subject inside and out. It seems like a huge boon to Twin Galaxies that Guiness was named as well.