In this upcoming Netflix document, parents discover the other life of their son in World of Warcraft. He died of a degenerative muscle disease.

The Remarkable life of Ibelin is a documentary that was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It will be available on Netflix for streaming in October. It tells the story about Mats Steen who died at 25 from a rare degenerative muscle disease. When Steen died in 2014, his family feared he had lived his life alone. However, they soon discovered that he had built a network of friends as Ibelin, a philandering nobleman detective roleplayer he played for years in World of Warcraft.

Netflix stated that "the film takes us on an adventure through Mats Steen's online life. It introduces us to Ibelin his charismatic World of Warcraft character, and highlights how community and soulful relations can transcend the boundaries of physical world."

According to a BBC article from 2019, Steen spent his last few years unable to leave the home he grew up in. Unbeknownst of his parents, Steen spent this time with his closest friends in World of Warcraft. Some of them had attended his 2014 funeral.

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin chronicles the tens of thousands of hours Steen lived as Ibelin, reconstructing his life in Azeroth from blog posts he'd written and interviews with his former guildmates--guildmates who'd known nothing about his illness until late in his life. Benjamin Ree, a filmmaker, worked with animators and Blizzard to recreate moments from Ibelin's roleplay history in World of Warcraft.

Ree, according to an accompanying article on Netflix's Tudum channel, had contacted Steen's parents to discuss the possibility of making a documentary, after reading the BBC story about their son from 2019. Ree soon experienced a serendipity. Ree was surprised to see his family and himself on one of the home videos. It turned out that their families had shared a friendship group when Steen, and Ree, were young children. Ree said, "I'm a non-religious person, but at that moment I almost became a religious one."

Netflix will begin streaming The Remarkable life of Ibelin on October 25, 2024.