At the beginning of July 2022 it was the biggest topic in gaming for a few days: Michael “shroud” Grzesiek (28) returns to e-sports as a pro and wants to help the “Sentinels” team to save a messed-up season in Valorant after all. But a month later it’s over again.
What was the hype? On July 8th, Team Sentinels released a short clip: shroud made himself a cup of tea and announced “I’m back, baby.”
The video received 7.3 million views and almost 250,000 likes on Twitter. That was a big deal.
shroud was supposed to help the organization “Sentinels” to finally land a playoff spot in North America after the season in Valorant had gone so-so.
The July announcement was a huge.-thing.
Without pro games, shroud’s legend as the “shooter god” on Twitch is only growing
Why was that so big? shroud used to be a CS:GO pro, but not a particularly glorious one, he switched to Twitch early on and became a pro streamer there.
On the Twitch streaming platform, it seemed like he was a much better shooter player than most other Twitch streamers and regular players. This is how the legend of the “human aimbot” came about: shroud was considered someone who could aim incredibly well and stayed cool in every situation.
Shroud also seemed far superior to other earlier shooter professionals, such as xQc.
Valorant is a tactical shooter with striking heroes, like Fade here:
Valorant introduces new agent Fade – Show off her cool skills in the gameplay trailer
Over the years, shroud’s reputation as “the best shooter player ever” grew. After all, he only played against “normal opponents”, not against professionals.
In general, things went brilliantly for the Canadian: shroud has become one of the biggest streamers on Twitch in the last 8 years and even earned a fortune with a trip to Mixer.
Because of his excellent reputation, many were now keen to see how the 28-year-old Canadian fared in a “real professional team”.
The star player of the Sentinels team, Tenz, also said: It’s not a PR stunt to get shroud now. He has what it takes to be a professional.
Twitch streamer returns to esports at retirement age (28) – teammate says: “Will perform strongly”
Sentinels miss out on playoff berth – season ends disappointingly
Was there a happy ending? No, there wasn’t. After missing the first chances to qualify for the playoffs in Valorant, the Sentinels now had their last chance. But that too was lost.
Sentinels took on Team 100 Thieves in a Last Chance Qualifier, but it was another defeat for the team, albeit a close one. One lost 1-2.
The season is over for the Sentinels and the team needs to regroup for next year.
Observers agree that shroud delivered a decent performance, even if it wasn’t enough for victory.
There has already been a discussion as to whether Sentinels is serious about shroud or whether it is just a PR gimmick:
Preparation was too short to keep up with the top teams
How does shroud rate his performance? shroud says he was at about 50% of his peak power he can bring to Valorant. Because he missed the preparation time in the boot camp. If he had gone through all the preparation, he probably would have done better.
He was slightly unhappy with his overall performance in the last game:
I felt like I didn’t play quite as well as I can play. I had a strong game two in the best-of-three series, but a pretty lousy performance in the last round, I apologize for that.
shroud
Does shroud continue? In a stream, shroud said, “If the franchise league comes along and if it’s in LA, there’s a very good chance I’ll continue playing professional Valorant.”
He believes in his team: If you stay together and do a boot camp, you can be dangerous, he says.
The question is whether shroud can really take off in the next season. It would be extraordinary: At 28, shroud is relatively old for a shooter professional and he lacks the constant training and competitive experience that players like Tenz (21) have already had in recent months.
But shroud obviously sees it differently:
Twitch streamer shroud says: eSports professionals can still compete at 50