This's all, the effects of human negligence itself anyone cannot be separated from it including the slightest thing.
A lot of users are in that situation,where they either forgot the password or the wallet seed or simply do not know where you have taken the back up of the wallet and in my opinion around a million bitcoin are lost forever and the majority of the coins are from the beginnning as it was easy to mine the coins.It is not possible to get those coins and no one can help you in recovering those.
That is right, there are definitely going to be victims like this in every revolutionary invention like that of bitcoin and the blockchain since many will doubt from the start whiles the few will stay with it and profit later as the technology evolves and so he's not alone as there are several others that have lost bigger amounts of bitcoin and it's a lesson for us all.
You are right if he wants, maybe he will be given a chance to be more successful than ever. Unfortunately, the amount of btc he got may not be what it used to be because the number of bitcoins is getting lower and lower.