Popular content creator and former CS:GO pro, Shroud has joined the Valorant roster of Sentinels. The move comes as a shock to fans as he last played professionally for Cloud9 in 2017. But with the inclusion of the highly-admired popular content creator, a number of questions have arrived. “Who is he replacing? What role will he be playing? How did he even get here?”- and much, much more. Today, we figure out all of that and maybe some more.
Shroud’s Career
Most fans know Shroud as a streamer but before that, the North-American was a well-known Counter-Strike player. Shroud went from a nobody to a CS:GO pro to almost retiring and then retiring to become a full-time streamer and now debuting professionally on Valorant. If that isn’t wild, then I don’t know what is! Let’s dive a little into the illustrious career that Shroud has enjoyed so far.
Shroud in CSGO
Michael “shroud” Grzesiek started off his journey with esports with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Since the launch of the title, Shroud had been a familiar face in the scene. He first j0ined Manajuma as a professional player, a team from America. Soon after, he was acquired by Complexity Gaming as a stand-in player instead of Todd “anger” Williams. Complexity was soon grabbed by Cloud9 and Shroud was given a permanent contract. Shroud found home in Cloud9 as he spent three eventful years with the organization. The Canadian picked up a number of titles under Cloud9 including the ESL Pro League Season 4 and ESL One: Cologne 2017. However, he was one of the players to get benched when William “RUSH” Wierzba and Tarik “tarik” Celik joined the starting lineup. Cloud9 announced that Shroud opted to serve as a backup and pursue full-time streaming. A few months later in 2018, he officially announced his retirement from playing CS:GO as a professional. At the same time, he left Cloud9 to further explore new fields.
Streaming Career
Shroud’s transition from a professional CS:GO athlete to a full-time streamer went smooth to say the least. He started streaming regularly on popular platform, Twitch and enjoyed unparalleled success there. Michael has always streamed a diverse set of games, including but not limited to Counter-Strike (of course), PUBG, Escape from Tarkov, Valorant and multiple single-player games as well. This allowed him to be open to massive groups of gamers who didn’t have a hard time liking his cheeky personality at all. All of this led to Michael climbing his way to be the 7th most followed streamer on Twitch. He is just behind the likes of xQc and Tfue in terms of total number of followers on Twitch. His top-notch content also led him to win the Content Creator of the Year at the The Game Awards in 2019 and Gamer of the Year at The Streamer Awards in 2022. His streams on Twitch regularly host more than 40,000 viewers.
Shroud in Valorant
Even though Shroud has never played competitive Valorant, he has streamed hundreds of hours on it. At the onset of Valorant, Shroud played some of the more laidback tournaments like the Nerd Street Gamers Invitational 2020 and the 100 Thieves Invitational 2020.
Shroud joining Sentinels
In a Twitter post yesterday, Sentinels announced the acquisition of Shroud. Being years away from the competitive scene and with no previous hint, fans all over social media went berserk after the announcement. And it was not just the fans, Valorant professionals and their teams were taken back as well.
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The legend returns, and he's here to win@shroud joins the Sentinels Valorant roster pic.twitter.com/VaIYTeR2nq
— Sentinels (@Sentinels) July 8, 2022
Sentinels Roster
With Shroud being the latest recruit of the Valorant roster of Sentinels, this is how we can expect the lineup to look like at North America: LCQ 2022
- Shahzeb “ShahZam” Khan
- Erik “Kanpeki” Xu
- Tyson “Ngo” Tenz
- Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek
- Michael “dapr” Gulino
ShahZam will continue to serve as the IGL for the American side. Shroud will serve as a Controller for the team.
Will Shroud prove to be a wise acquisition for the Sentinels Valorant roster? Guess that remains to be seen at the NA:LCQ 2022!
