Shroud

About

Shroud, stylized as shroud, is the online handle of Mixer streamer and former professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player Michael Grzesiek. After stepping down from professional CS:GO in 2017, Shroud became a full-time streamer on Twitch, mainly broadcasting competitive FPS games, particularly of the battle royale genre. In October 2019, Shroud announced a move to the Mixer streaming platform. He announced his return to Twitch in August of 2020.

Online History

Shroud started his professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive career in 2013, playing for Exertus, Slow Motion and Manajuma, and joining compLexity Gaming as a stand-in in 2014. After compLexity Gaming was acquired by Cloud9 on August 1st, 2014, Shroud joined the main roaster as a rifler.^[1]

With Cloud9, shroud achieved high competitive results, including podium places at several S-Tier tournaments, including 2nd place at ESL ESEA Pro League Season 1 in July 2015 and 1st place at ESL Pro League Season 4 – Finals. In August 2017, shroud stepped down from the main Cloud9 lineup but remained a stand-in player for the team while streaming full-time on Twitch. In April 2018, Shroud announced his retirement from playing CS:GO professionally, also leaving Cloud9.^[6]

In the following year, shroud remained a full-time Twitch streamer, mainly focusing on games of the battle royale genre such as PUBG, Fortnite and, following its release in February 2019, Apex Legends, becoming the most popular streamer in the latest. As of October 24th, 2019, Shroud had over 7 million followers on Twitch.^[2]

Move to Mixer

On October 24th, 2019, shroud announced that he will be leaving streaming platform Twitch for its Microsoft-owned competitor Mixer, with the announcement tweet gaining over 29,600 retweets and 179,700 likes in one day (shown below).^[3]

Same shroud. New home.https://t.co/eZV2GBBSsY pic.twitter.com/AHaajkjees

— Michael Grzesiek (@shroud) October 24, 2019

In the following hours, the news was covered by multiple news outlets, while Mixer reached the top of Twitter trends on the same day. On Mixer, the streamer accumulated over 340,000 followers within 24 hours,^[4] with his first stream on the platform peaking at 78,000 viewers.^[5]

The deal effectively ended in June 2020 following Microsoft shutting down Mixer.^[7]

Return To Twitch

On August 11th, 2020, Shroud announced via his Twitter account that he would be returning to Twitch on an exclusive deal (shown below).

Criticisms and Controversies

PUBG Ban

In July 2018, Shroud received a one month ban from PUBG after playing with a hacker.

I was trying to have a good time. Obviously, I knew what the fuck I was doing, which wasn’t a great idea. It seemed like a great idea, but it wasn’t a great idea. I’m sorry to those peeps who are real upset with me, with all the, y’know, flying around with the cheater and such…

Personal Life

Michael Grzesiek was born in Toronto, Ontario on June 2nd, 1994, and is of Polish descent.^[6] He has since relocated to Orange County, California.

Search Interest

External References