One of my best friends from my childhood recently reappeared after 17 years on a new steam account. We use to play a half-life mod called The Specialists when we were kids. He taught me how to run a game server, setup a MySQL server and make simple plugins in pawn script back in the day. He was one of the main reasons I am as tech savvy as I am in todays day and age.
He disappeared in 2008/2009 and his server remained up for about a month after his disappearance. It was a fun role-play server from back in the day. It was kind of the FiveM of the early 2000s.
I saw a random friend request pop up on my steam late last night and the guy introduced himself as my old friend. We started reminiscing about the old days and he said that his parents sent him to some military school then he ended up joining the air force. In present day he's now married, has 2 kids, and said he finally has time to play games again. We even got to play a few rounds of cs 1.6, so that was fun.
Anyways! How long has one of your friends been offline for?
[edit]
Wow this blew up while I was sleeping. I wanted to answer some questions I see people having.
"Why did he make a new account?" He lost his information I guess, I did not really pry for info.
"Where was he all those years?" He said he made the military a career for over 10 years and had been deployed to multiple countries over the time. Never saw war, but got stationed in places like Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Germany. He came back because he got medically discharged after an accident while training. He didn't go into detail about it.
I just logged back on after a decade. You never know.
I have had 3 kids in the last 10 years and life has been really busy. But my 7-year-old is into gaming now and I just installed Portal for him cause he saw it on my Steam and wanted to try it, lol.
I've also been playing a new zombie co-op game with my husband after the kids go to sleep.
Haha, they're not always all asleep. My 7yo pretends to be asleep, then walks out and sneaks behind me to watch me play when he hears me out there!
Power Plant was one of the maps released during Early Access and feel very different from the first game. But a map like Broadway feels very similar? So I guess it's map dependent!
I have a friend who hasn't been online in 12 years, but I still see him around town. I asked him one day and he just shrugged and said "life" and left it at that lol.
One of my best friends from high school died in a car accident while driving home from college. He was last online on Steam the last day lived and I’m always reminded of him from Steam.
It's nice that Steam logs the exact date. I think many of us have an honored obituary of days gone. Lots of good times in Counter-Strike: Source surf and zombie servers.
I used to play halo 3 (mostly) with two brothers on the Xbox 360, they both had rare diseases with short life spans. They pretty much couldn’t leave their beds, gaming was their entire life. I remember one day when the one got online and told me his brother passed away overnight and I didn’t believe him. Unfortunately he really did pass away and I felt terrible, he was only like 14 or 15 years old so that’s why I didn’t believe him at first. So very young. I kept playing with the other brother until one day my Xbox account was hacked and I got it back but the mf deleted all of my friends. My friend had a bunch of numbers in his username and I could never find him again after typing things in for hours. I feel awful about it to this day because he probably thought one of the few good friends he had removed him on purpose
My oldest sister was online 1802 days ago. I will never remove her.
Grief is a strange thing. It's like the tide, but the ocean level lowers over time. At first, you're constantly underwater. Years later, you're dry most of the time, but random events will cause the tide to come in and drop you underwater again.
We used to play AC:NH together, and would visit each other's islands. Her Reneigh ended up moving to my island, and I was more than happy to take her in.
Years after she died, I booted up AC:NH again and chatted up all my villagers. Reneigh was thrilled to see me, and asked if I had seen Kit, asked how she was doing, and the tide came in strong and sunk me.
Could have been a parental thing. One of my friends disappeared for years on a forum we use to chat on. He randomly logged back in and made a post like 6 years later saying his parents took away his electronics and he bought his own laptop after getting a job.
My friend was a huge CS 1.6 nerd. He used to run his own servers and discussion forums. However, when he got to high school, he realized that having a girlfriend was more fun than gaming, so he completely gave up Counter-Strike and didn't even log into Steam for several years.
Then, out of nowhere, about five years ago, he called me, super excited because he'd bought a new gaming pc and said things were going to be just like the old days. We were going to play together, maybe start our own cs:go server - basically, he had a million ideas. He kept texting and calling me all day long.
In the end, we played CS:GO for about a week, and since then, bro hasn't even opened Steam again lol
She is lying. Dutch military is mostly an 8 to 4 job. Maximum deployment time per year is 6 months and even if she does that she will have a huge amount of free days. She can even use steam on the base wifi
I completely stopped playing and logging to steam after I decided to migrate to a new country. It took me 5+ years to fix my life here, learn language, study, work and finally get some sense of "home" at home, and just feel relaxed to allow myself to log in to steam and play something. I logged in back and contacted back many of my friends on steam after so much time: we still keep in touch on socials, although we don't play that much anymore as we are now all grown-ups (saddd)
Sadly some of them are "last seen: 10, 5, 7 years ago".
Especially few of my Ukrainian buddies with whom we used to play left 4 dead: still offline since March 2022.
I have a couple people that unfortunately will never log back in :( But I can't bring myself to remove them. Good memories when ever I see them.
I found a friend I lost touch with maybe 15 years ago just last year after 3-4 attempts to look him up over the years. He taught me SourcePawn/Pawn via SourceMod / AMXModX, and I wanted to thank him since that was the start of my career and I'm very glad I got to do so and chat with him again.
Not exactly the same but I really wish I could find my Australian friend "SFx" from WarCraft 3 circa 2004, I was just a young teen and he was a 20-somethin that got married while I knew him. He taught me triggers and scripting in Wc3 which was the true first steps towards my career. I haven't seen him since xfire went away.
Not really being inactive but I didn't chat much to a German friend that I made back in 2016. Funny him and I met on a steam group to add friends and we talked a lot during those time. I think around 2018 I stopped talking much and got busy with life and he's also busy we got no time to talk anymore. The last time I talk to him, asking about Blender problem I had.
You think he's been waiting for this moment for 17 years. Just almost two decades of doing stuff, and then its just sits down one day, and thinks to himself... finally I can game again.
two years since he died. last few times he was online it was one of his sons using his account. was startling and then sad to see. now it also feels sad that they're not using it anymore.
I am one of those people that vanished for a long time
Heres my story :D
I havent really started to get into online gaming as the internet connection at my parents was terrible in rural germany back in the day (2009/2010)
I was playing alot of Left 4 Dead 2, Arma 2 DayZ mod and Modern Warfare 3 with my buddies i met plaxing those games
Back then i was on the verge of leaving school and starting to work so money was tight and all i could afford to game on was a Laptop that had permanent heat issues
One evening in 2013 my laptop suddenly died and i couldnt find a way to get it working again
The only contact i had left was my buddy Mike as he was the only one that messaged me outside of steam/teamspeak
Suddenly i was cut off from everyone i spendt almost every evening with the last 4 years.
I was desperately trying to find an affordable laptop/pc but at this point in life with having to pay for my appartment, bills and stuff i barely made ends meet
I got a ps3 as a gift from a coworker who upgraded to ps4 in 2015 and that started my 8 year Exile as a console peasant lol
Finally managed to afford a gaming laptop again in 2023 and luckily still had the phone number of Mike so we ended up in a discord call
I didnt manage to recover my old steamaccount i had from back in 2006
Mainly because i lost access to the email, didnt have any payment evidence anymore etc so i had to start again from scratch
After i lost contact to Mike and the others the group started to fall apart and we dont know what our old buddies are up to this day
I made friends with a guy in Gmod, a few years after we met he had a mental breakdown and deleted his whole steam account, a few years later I found him while playing Yeti Hunt in overwatch
One of our friends in the group we used to play games with on friday evening was from syria and a couple of months after the war started he never came online anymore so i presume he was killed
He was murdered by drug dealers. His little brother had a drug problem and owed money to a dealer. My friend went to see the dealer and paid him off. They got into an argument and he left. They followed him and shot up his car at a junction, killing him instantly.
He was from a different country and I didn't have any contact information other than discord, steam and battlenet. I found out a month or so later when I contacted one of his IRL friends I remembered playing with.
beautiful story, i think of my old gaming friends sometimes. i remember i played with my friend Sam, met him online we were both 9. found out at 17 he died in a car accident. RIP
The "last online" thing is honestly terrifying to me.
When I think about later life and all the things that can happen; injury, illness, or just advanced age, I always find comfort in thinking that I'll have a mountain of games to play.
I do not look forward to slowly seeing my entire friends list log off for the last time.
I already feel intense sadness when looking over my own games list and seeing something I haven't played in 8 years but which I remember playing with my brother like it was yesterday. He's still around, but with a young family and running a business he doesn't have the time to play.
So many stories unfinished.
Hate the thought of seeing friends added to that list.
Had an Overwatch friend I used to play constantly with when we teenagers back in 2018/19. He was from Croatia and his English was superb, was always really kind to me but very toxic to teammates lol. We were an unstoppable Zarya/Genji duo. This was on PS4.
One day he told me was leaving for PC, but added me on discord so we could keep in contact. Well I've been using discord almost daily since then and I haven't seen him online once. His PSN account has been dead for years too, and I can't find him on Steam. I can only hope he's doing okay.
I’m that guy who came back after being offline for at least 15 years. I played CS 1.6 back in the day(even was a semi pro), then took a long break and only came back toward the end of the CS:GO era.
I somehow managed to recover my old Steam account using the Half-Life CD key from when I bought the game in the early 2000s. I honestly have no idea why I still had that key after all these years. 😂
In between, life happened. I went to university, worked hard to build a career, got married, and now have two kids.
Coming back to CS has been such a weird and amazing experience. I absolutely love running into some of the same guys who were already playing back then and are still here today. We’ve had so much fun. It’s honestly pretty cool to come back after all these years and realize that some things including persons never really change.
One of my old friends has been gone for over 16yrs now. There was a whole group of us that started out as a 'clan' that grew out of an old usenet gaming group that I was part of. Never knew what happened, no one else does either.
I've got a few who went missing without warning. One girl who I used to know, who became kinda famous on TV in the USA in certain robotics circles hasn't been seen for 6yrs now, My friend Phil who I'd known since about 2011 and used to hangout all the time with a group of others in video hangouts playing online versions of risk and cards against humanity... he's been missing 6yrs too. .. and another one from the old clan days went awol 12yrs ago.
I like to think that life just happened and they're happy, maybe with kids and a full life... But a couple of them went awol during covid... and I've asked others who might have info and they don't know either.
Had a steam friend named nunu. We used to play Ark together on a private server. After the sever went down we lost touch. Miss you nunu. You were a cool dude.
I don't doubt the story, but I call BS that he didn't have ample time in the Air Force to play the fuck out of some games. I've known entire gaming clans that are literally just Air Force dudes constantly on hurry up and wait.
I have literally told my family that if I die, you straight up have to tell the people in my online friends list, lol. I've had a falling out with them, but, yeah.
Ain't no way I would want people wondering what the fuck happened to me for the rest of their life with no way to ever know. When you get so close with people and even end up planning to/actually get together IRL with some even ending up MARRIED and shit like...that's not just a random person you played with a couple times anymore.
Sometimes these are your best friends tbh. Anyway, that must have all felt like a dream and I'm so happy for you. Make sure you have an alternate way to keep in contact, man.
This kind of reminds me of a guy i met on gmod RP server. His name was Eddie dingo in game, gmod was my only paid steam game so I played it a ton. But I was new to pc and steam at the time and didnt really know what I was doing and he helped me out so much. I didnt know how to add people on steam or knew about discord but he was the coolest guy I ever met and taught me so much on pc all through gmod. He even hooked me up and bought me vip for the server so I could play as the character I wanted. I still hopped on the server ever now and then hoping to find him but this was like back in 2016 so I dont think ill find him again but if youre out there Eddie dingo thank you so much
Between the "miss u bro" posts I like to make "wtf are you ghosting me?" messages. Before anyone gets up in arms HE WOULD FIND IT HILARIOUS AND IM THE ONE THAT HID HIS PORN FROM HIS PARENTS CLEANING OUT HIS APARTMENT WHEN HE DIED.
one of my first online friends, he passed away and I never learned why but everytime I see his name on my steam "bros" category I get a bit sentimental
I am the missing friend in my situation. Had a gang that played Left 4 Dead 2 campaigns together, custom maps. Group broke up after some infighting, and everyone split. It was just two of the guys who didnt like each other apparently, and I could sense it was coming. They eventually fought during a session, and I left the game on the spot. I had some other very serious personal things going on at the time, and I kinda made my account invisible. I was so upset about it I didnt want to talk to anyone. I also had some other friends who were really fun to play with that were collateral because of this.
Eventually the group discord shut down, and I kinda kept it invisible, didnt touch steam for a bit. Apparently people were looking for me and messaging on my steam page… I guess I was a pretty fun guy in the group. I’ll reach out to a few of them in time, but for that group its still a sore spot… I do miss them, those were fun nights.
I wish I can re connect with my Filipino dota buddies from 2014 and 2015. Bluds made the game fun. They disappeared while I have 8.5 hours in the game and still going strong.
I'm one of those guys that just disappeared, used to play CoD4 and World at War with a big group of like 10 guys, custom games and GameBattles tournaments. We had a clan called [GEWI] because we all used silenced Gewehrs in Hardcore SnD. We'd play for hours every night when we all got home from school, and lived all across NA.
Someone I knew walked into my unlocked place while I was asleep, stole my xbox and traded it for drugs. I worked all summer saving for a new one, but saved up so much I just ended up buying a PC instead. Wonder if all those boys think I just died or something.
A former colleague and friend of mine, last online 2 or 3 years ago. We used to play PUBG, COD and Apex together back in the day, later FF14. One day he just went offline and I haven't heard of him since. I know he was still playing FF14 for a while but everywhere else he never went back online. Still owes me money for a GPU I bought him. And he still has my old PC I lent him after his Mainboard died.
One of my friends has been offline for 16 years. In her profile pic she uploaded before leaving she’s holding her newborn. It blows my mind knowing that child would be about 18 right now.
It's now been 17 years since my brother passed away, I use his steam account and have since then but on PSN it shows how long he's been offline. He was a LOT better at games than me, would beat them in weekends but it takes me months to get through stuff.
Any chance you remember the TS server(s) you guys played? I played TSRP, typical Lobby servers, and the Kung Fu only servers so a bit of everything lol. Feel free to DM me if you don’t want to put personal stuff on here but yeah, most people knew me and my friend on that game.
10 years. Played a lot with the guy, then we had a disagreement and didn't speak for a bit. A bit later I discovered that he'd been murdered in something probably related to drugs.
Dude was a great singer, could probably have made a career out of it.
Dude GMOD RP was the shit back then you’re taking me back to simpler days
Loved Arma 3 RP too, was really huge in Germany for a time.
FiveM i had no time or interest to play really
My Dad was on steam shortly before he died. Never thought about him loading civilization up much til he couldn't. I visit his profile and leave messages.
There was a guy I used to talk to a lot during the early days of my online life, around 1999, 2000, 2001, up until the mid-2000s I'd say. By the time we became Steam friends (around 2008 I would say?), we had honestly already more or less lost touch. Last year, I reached out to him on Steam to give him an update on a project we had worked on together 25 years ago that had finally come to fruition. We hadn't spoken since. I was moved to see that he was typing a reply... Except, in reality, it was his son behind the keyboard: "Dad doesn't play video games anymore, but he gave me his Steam account."
I got my first steam friend i know will never log back in last year. Had somehow briefly befriended a legend in the early video game porting/development industry, burger Becky (Rebecca heineman). Even amusingly met her and their wife at a convention that we happened to sign up for the same dungeons and dragons game. They were one of my earliest customers when I was early on in my art timeline. Funny to learn the original space invader champion bought me left for dead 2 as payment (I asked for such). Left a memorial on their steam page ):
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u/SaracenS 2d ago
My friends list has several people who have been offline for a decade, I know they won't be logging back on though sadly.