“I was never ill, not even a little bit.”
Popular Pyro main and Team Fortress 2 YouTuber Sketchek has returned to YouTube after faking his own death in 2015.
Reported by PCGamesN, a new video titled “謝罪” (Japanese for “Apology”) and accompanied by Midge Ure’s cover of David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World appeared on Sketchek’s YouTube channel – the first since 2015.
The last video he posted was deleted but has since been re-uploaded by other users. In it, he claimed he was “very ill” and that his health was “gradually deteriorating.” It was then that he announced he was finished making YouTube videos, and hadn’t been heard from publicly since.
In this new video, Sketchek apologizes for his actions, saying “About three years ago, I announced that I had contracted a non-specific terminal illness. I want everyone to know that was a lie. It was a sick joke, it was a ruse. I was never ill, not even a little bit. You might say that I was mentally ill, because I thought it would be fun to convince a lot of people that care about me that I would f**king die, but I’ve been feeling really bad about it lately, I can no longer bare the weight of my sins. Which is why I’ve decided to come out with the truth and apologize for lying. So I am sorry.”
“I’m sorry, and I hope I didn’t cause anybody too much grief: especially if you have someone with a chronic illness in your life,” continued Sketchek. “I don’t really have an excuse. What can I say, I just love the feeling of taking someone for a ride, but I took it a bit too far this time.”
He continued to explain that, at the time he claimed he was dying, he came to the conclusion that video games were ruining his life, and decided to shut down his channel. He claims he wanted to make it really hard for himself to come back to the channel and gaming. Though he quit playing video games for a while, he eventually started playing TF2 again and decided to return to the channel and apologize. He plans on releasing new content in the future.
“I don’t expect forgiveness: what I did was pretty indefensible. But I hope you can still enjoy my content regardless,” he says, ending the video. “Thanks for listening, and I look forward to seeing a bunch of e-celebs virtue signal over this.”
According to PCGamesN, Valve added a passive to Pyro’s Axetinguisher called “Sketchek’s Bequest” in 2018. Prior to releasing the video, an unverified Twitter account attributed to Sketchek tweeted out “kept you waiting huh” on February 5.
For more on Team Fortress 2, read about its 10-year anniversary update.
Colin Stevens is a news writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
