No sorry that is incorrect. Anyone with a brain who puts hours into creating something on a computer makes backups regularly. I make PMVs / HMVs and I always have my progress on 3 separate hard drives. I don't know if he was just careless... But I also wouldn't be surprised at all if he made it up to keep subscribers from being upset that he hasn't done much work lately. Obviously there is absolutely no way to know. Jackerman can literally say what he wants as there is no way to disprove it. Considering he was able to come out with MW2 relatively quickly during a period when he was very busy... I can't believe that anything substantial has been created for MW3 at this point. So if he says THIS is what is causing MW3 to not come out this year, I have to call bullshit. It sounds more like an excuse to justify what he had already planned to do rather than a reason. And before anyone points it out... No I am not a subscriber and this is one of the reasons why I am not.
I thought the exact same thing when I read this fantastic story of someone who's hard drive is possibly gone with all that hard work and didn't back it up.
From what I'm reading, the guy has a lot going on, it's a lot of pressure, and in his position, if I didn't do the work, I couldn't simply say I didn't do the work, so I'd come up with something like this. Is it ethical? No, but it'll get people off my back for a bit so I can get my shit in order as far as work/life/jackerman duties.
As you and others have said, we'll never know, but I really don't think it's wild to imagine this could just be something said to delay it. It's really strange to not back up your work, especially because he makes some money off it, it's a job, and you wouldn't want to fuck with it by not doing the basic thing of backing up your work.
It's just strange that there's people willing to just buy this without being a little curious how someone who pours hundreds of hours into his work doesn't make sure it's backed up and doesn't get lost. And the whole 'no big deal' is if it's lost tells me it's not really lost, and he'll get some extra time making people think he's working on it while taking care of other business and then he can release it when he has more time.
I'm saying all of this but I'm not mad at the guy if that's what he's doing, it seems to be a crap-ton of work, and I don't think he can honestly say, 'hey guys, I'm fucking swamped so I need a break', so this is one way to do it.
...Or he really lost his hard drive, in which case that's moronic for someone that's been doing this for a while and makes money from it. So dumb it's just that hard to believe, but crazier things have happened.