The popular YouTuber Technoblade, for his humorous Minecraft videos, has died following a year-long battle with cancer, his family announced Thursday.
Last summer, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that affects the body’s connective tissues.
Technoblade kept most details about his life private, but in a video containing his final message to his 10 million-plus YouTube channel subscribers, posted after his death, he revealed that his real first name was Alex.
Technoblade thanked fans for buying his merchandise — he referred to it as ‘selling out’ — and after noting that the proceeds would pay for his siblings to attend college, said that if he had “a hundred lives,” he “would choose to be Technoblade again every single time. Those were the happiest years of my life.”
According to multiple outlets, he was 23, but as Technoblade noted in his final video, he also occasionally pranked fans about his personal details, and no definitive date of birth has been released. Technoblade suggested in a December, 2021 tweet that he was born in late 1999 or at some point in 2000. His final message did not contain confirmation of his date of birth.
“We, the family of Technoblade, wanted you all to know just how much he adored and respected his fans and colleagues.” his family said in a statement Thursday.
The statement continued:
“From Technoblade’s earliest online days, he was always strategizing ways to delight and reward his audience,” the statement continued. “Even after his eventual successes he somehow managed to keep his good-natured humility, competing with an endearing balance between his confidence and self-deprecating with. He avoided personal fame and worked hard to keep his true identity confidential, and we ask you to honor his wishes to protect his privacy and the privacy of his family.”
“This past year has had a lot of rough spots for our son as he battled stage 4 cancer. But he didn’t complain, and kept using his famous strategic mind to try to beat what he knew were almost impossible odds. My son’s bravery on this path was a shining lesson to all of us who were privileged to walk it with him. Thank you for sharing his journey through it all, as he did the work he loved for his beloved fans.”
Technoblade took an unannounced hiatus from making videos in the summer of 2021, but he returned in August of that year with a video disclosing his cancer diagnosis to fans.