In 2015, YouTuber and Team Fortress 2 player Sketchek was known as one of the game’s most skilled Pyro mains. He revealed to his audience that he had a terminal illness, which he never specified, and then stopped uploading content to his YouTube channel and disappeared from the Internet entirely. As Sketchek expected, many assumed that he had died, but he has since resurfaced on YouTube, revealing that he faked his death and illness.

In a new video, entitled “Apology,” Sketchek discusses why he decided to do this. According to him, he came to the conclusion that video games were ruining his life, and so part of the reason why he faked his death in the way he did was that it would make it more difficult for him to keep playing games and producing YouTube content. In the video, Sketchek also admits that he faked his death as a “sick joke,” and added, “What can I say, I just love the feeling of taking someone for a ride.”

Sketchek acknowledges the tastelessness of his stunt, and apologizes in the video to his fans and anyone that has someone with an actual chronic illness in their life. Despite this, Sketchek plans on producing new YouTube content in the future, concluding his apology video by saying, “I don’t expect forgiveness: what I did was pretty indefensible. But I hope you can still enjoy my content regardless.”

At the time of writing, it doesn’t seem Sketchek’s stunt has created any major backlash among his fans or those on YouTube. Right now the video has over 4,000 likes versus a little over 1,000 dislikes, so it seems people are open to forgiving him for faking his death back in 2015.

Others may not be so easy to forgive, especially when taking into account that Valve added an item in the game to pay respect to the supposedly dead Team Fortress 2 fan. The item Sketchek’s Bequest was added just last year, and despite this, Sketchek still didn’t come clean. Sketchek’s stunt could make game developers hesitant to add in-game tributes to dead fans, as they may be worried that they’re being tricked. At the time of writing, Valve hasn’t stated whether or not it will remove the item now that it’s been revealed that Sketchek has been alive this entire time.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how Sketchek’s YouTube career progresses now that he’s back, and if he is able to rebuild any bridges he has burned with the Team Fortress 2 community.

Team Fortress 2 is out now for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Source: PCGamesN