A few days before the 24th of June, our playtesting lead Idio attempted to contact playtester Jaeger about setting up some times to test the mod with the rest of team. The person who responded claimed to be Jaeger's brother (and that they shared a laptop) and told Idio that Jaeger had fallen ill and was in the hospital. Over the next few days the person kept Idio up to date on his condition as he steadily declined in health until Idio was told late into the evening of the 23rd that Jaeger had passed away after falling unconscious. The events were detailed and conditions worsened in a medically plausible manner.
The morning of the 24th I (Unikraken) awoke to find that Jaeger had been reported to have passed away from a sudden medical condition. Idio had kept me in the loop during the past few days so I knew some of the details preceding the death. I typed up a statement to let fans and the team alike know that Jaeger had passed according to his brother and that we were in mourning for our friend. Understandably, this news shocked and devastated the tight knight group of testers and devs who work together to bring you Sins of the Prophets. There was an outpouring of support from fans of the mod and the Halo community in general immediately. Even a 343 employee commented on the passing. Halo Collective contacted us asking if they could produce a memorial video for Jaeger. The Halo community that I love showed itself vibrantly in our time of loss and sought to uplift Jaeger. We were all unimaginably touched by all of this.
About an hour or two after I posted the statement and went to work, Jaeger's brother again contacted Idio and asked him to remove the posts as his family requested privacy during their time of loss. He was told it was only okay to post about this on our private forum. We complied, albeit a little confused by the request, since we hadn't used his real name and didn't feel the secrecy was necessary. Over the course of the next two days a number of red flags began to pop up that caused the dev team to harbor skepticism over the claims made by the individual operating Jaeger's Steam and Skype accounts. I won't list them all, but Jaeger appeared to be un-phased by his own death in every account attached to any pseudonym he's ever used, including accounts it would make no sense to share with any alleged brother. During this time, we attempted to offer to send flowers or cards for his presumed funeral so that we might mourn his loss like any long distance friend might. The "brother" shot all of these down with surprisingly upbeat responses all the while binging on all of Jaeger's favorite games for hours at a time. Idio even offered to attend Jaeger's funeral, since they live somewhat near each other.
After two days of investigating and communicating with Jaeger's Steam account, I came to the conclusion that Jaeger was faking his death for what must be his own personal amusement. I eventually confronted Jaeger with the information I had collected and he eventually came clean he had, in fact, attempted to fake the death of his playtester account to shell off his old internet persona. He listed reasons for doing so that related to troubles in his life that he felt warranted such a thing. I convinced him to make a forum post admitting he was alive and lied to Idio and myself so that his previous teammates wouldn't mourn the death of a living individual. After he made the post he began removing everyone from SotP from his social media accounts and I banned him permanently from the forums.
Why am I sharing internal drama with you, you might ask?
Primarily because we were unwilling participants in maliciously deceiving you and our team and we want to clear the air, because many of you read the statement before it was pulled down. This event is sadly public and must be dealt with publicly. However, I also think this incident summarizes the Halo community incredibly well. A single individual behaved incredibly poorly and the vast majority of the community rallied to support us in our time of need. They sought to uplift our fallen comrade and immortalize his contributions to our little Halo project.
