Between TFA, and this thread I remembered I needed to check up on my gaming buddy, I hadn't heard from him in a few months. He hadn't been answering his Steam chat, texts, nothing. After not getting any response, I did a little digging and came across his obituary and reached out to some common friends and confirmed the news.
I also found out, the reason he still shows as online is his coworkers found his Steam profile on a company desktop. They left it plugged in and online so he'd stay with us.
There was once this copy-pasta thread or may be it was a capture on 4chan a few years ago where a user remembers a player from an fps (don't remember which). He was a player from Egypt and being 4chan they thought his broken english and odd words regarding the fps fighting in game was entertaining so the author befriended him and added him to his Steam contact list. Around the time of the Arab spring, the friend told the author about the unrest, and that he might not come back in real life. I think he might have made an allusion to the "fight" in game matches as similar to this real fight. The conclusion of the article was the "last online: 3 months ago" tag line at the bottom of the chat box, or some other time period like that.
EDIT: found it[0]. Got the bit about the allusion to the fight in game wrong.
Related to gaming and preserving memories, I recall a Reddit thread a couple of years ago about a young lad who loved playing a first person car racing game with his dad.
After his dad unexpectedly passed, he went back to the game one day and noticed his dad's "ghost" car racing against him on the track. As his dad's ghost car would always be the one to race against as long as it held the lap record, I believe he said that if he ever got close to beating his dad's time, he would back off and lose the head to head so that he could always continue to race his dad.
I also found out, the reason he still shows as online is his coworkers found his Steam profile on a company desktop. They left it plugged in and online so he'd stay with us.
Rest in Peace, Dave.