Jonas Neubauer, a seven-time winner of the Classic Tetris World Championship and a popular Twitch streamer, has died at age 39. According to his Twitter profile and a message posted on Discord, he died on January 5 after a "sudden and unexpected illness."

As Neubauer once told Tetris.com, he first got hooked on Tetris when he was 6 or 7 years old playing on his uncle's Macintosh. I was intrigued by its simplicity," he said, "and I enjoyed the fact that you were playing against the game itself, not other players. My brothers were good at chess, but I didn't like playing against them."

Neubauer competed in and won the first Classic Tetris World Championship in 2010, won again in 2011, 2012, and 2013, and came in second in 2014; he won three more times in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and in 2018 he won the highest score, fastest to 300,000 points He also set two world records: highest score and fastest time to 300,000 points in 2018.

The Classic Tetris World Championship website describes him as "an absolute pillar of positivity and humility," and it shows in this video after his loss to 16-year-old newcomer Joseph Saelee in the 2018 Grand Final can be seen.

Neubauer streamed some of his practice matches on Twitch, garnering more than 25,000 followers, as well as a variety of games, from a challenge to beat his personal best in "Yomigaeri" to a live game of "Dungeons & Dragons" played around a table. His last upload shows him playing TETR.IO, a free Tetris fan game, with his wife, Heather Ito, by his side, chatting with his many fans. [Tetris Grandmaster Tomohiro Tatejima spoke of his "deep sadness over this great loss," and Spelunky designer Derek Yu said that "the game and its fans could not ask for a better champion."