Remembering Hax$.

[A Former User]

(WARNING: CONTAINS SUICIDE)
HAX$

....
Abdulaziz “Hax$” Al-Yami, a lauded Super Smash Bros. Melee player, died in the 3 months. The details are murky, but it seems to stem from complications related to a prior suicide attempt last year. I won’t eulogize the man; I didn’t know him, and all I can really attest to is that he was a prominent player for Melee for many many years, notably being a shining example of the power of ergonomic controllers. To be quite honest, that’s about all the nice things I have to say, as my impressions were mostly negative. That’s not me being callous or cruel, just honest – like many, my major memory of Al-Yami was the very public downfall he had in 2021. After spending the better part of 3 months launching a bizarre harassment campaign against another player, William “Leffen” Hjelte, Al-Yami was banned from the vast majority of Melee events, a decision that would end up permanent. It is impossible to fully sum up that situation with any sort of brevity, so the best I can do is link you to my prior blog on the matter.

In the back of my head, I always had a feeling that there was something dark beneath the surface of this event, and eventually I was proven right. It has since mostly been scrubbed from the internet, but a close friend of Al-Yami wrote a desperate plea regarding his mental state around this time last year. A 2-week stay in a psychiatric ward following a long spiral would lead to a clinic diagnosis of bipolar disorder, a trait he allegedly inherited genetically from his father. I grappled with conflicting feelings upon hearing that revelation, as I found it impossible to view the situation without that critical context. When it was revealed in August that Al-Yami had made an attempt on his life, which left him an amputee, things had already spun far out of control for any one individual person or group to resolve the matter.

Suffice to say, many do not share my more nuanced view. If you dare to check social media, you may find yourself caught in the crossfire of an ensuing war regarding who is to blame for Al-Yami’s death, as if he was in fact murdered by someone tangible you could point to and shame on the internet. What you won’t see from any of these pigs – for that is what they are, squealing hogs who don’t give a single shit about the very real person that died – is an acknowledgement of the real culprit, which has been staring us in the face for some time. Ever since the revelation of his diagnosis, I found myself looking back into Al-Yami’s long public history online, which started in his teenage years all the way to his death. What I found is someone whose mental decline had slowly taken root as he aged into an adult, as bipolar disorder often does, leading to many instances of irrational, self-destructive behavior. Far from the scheming of a narcissistic mastermind, this history speaks to someone who was struggling, unable to cope, and using the uncritical admiration he earned online from his genuine talent at video games as a panacea that ultimately fed into the illness that was eating away at him.

There will be many who seek to martyr Al-Yami as someone who was publicly humiliated and shamed into suicide despite being totally innocent, and some who will be repulsed by the bad behavior while entirely dismissing that he had spent many years in a sustained mental health crisis. I’m of the opinion that the only way to truly respect someone’s life is to acknowledge the fullness of who they were, and not a facsimile churned out by hate machines. These reductive hero and villain narratives might get attention on social media but do a great disservice to a real human who died fighting something that he could not control and didn’t ask for, that consumed his life even as he appeared to be of sound mind.

There was a passage in the post that Al-Yami’s friend wrote regarding his state of mind that I believe bookends both halves of this story:

And Don't Be Sad Because He Died. But Be Happy Because Of His Gift That He Gave Us.

Rip To Hax$.
May 7, 1994. He Passed Away On March 25, 2025...

[Wolfinator734]

rest in peace, suicide and other mental complications are hard. stay safe out there, and remember, suicide is never the answer.

[Forsaknbe]

idk who that is but R.I.P

[Sup3rSwaggyy1983]

I don't even think i know who this guy is, but RIP, they need some peace after going through all of that