Streamer Michael “shroud” Grzesiek returns to Twitch after almost 300 days in Mixer exile: The viewer numbers are incredibly high. 516,000 viewers peaked as he played Valorant . He threw some jabs at Dr Disrespect and, despite the new “Uncle” look, is truly the same: Just a guy who plays.
This is the situation:
- Streamer shroud was a staple on Twitch for years. The former CS:GO pro was part of the “old Twitch elite” even before Fortnite elevated the platform to a new level. He is considered a “shooter god” and a human aimbot.
- In October 2019, shroud switched to Mixer for what is believed to be a lot of money. The platform aimed to establish Microsoft as a competitor to Twitch. Here, shroud had significantly fewer viewers and could not benefit from the hype around Valorant as he could have on Twitch.
- After the closure of Mixer, the 26-year-old was free again. shroud allegedly turned down a lot of money by not switching to Facebook Gaming. Now he has returned to Twitch after more than a month off, where he is streaming again. He has signed another exclusive deal.
515,000 concurrent viewers at shroud
These were the viewer numbers: shroud streamed for 7 hours and 37 minutes in the “Valorant” category. On average, he had 222,888 viewers. At the peak, relatively at the beginning of the stream, he reached 516,289 viewers.
This is a huge outlier. Typically, only special events achieve such heights: live presentations like those from Ubisoft or Sony and the finals of major esports tournaments.
“I am just a normal guy”
This is what shroud says himself: He was surprised by the viewer numbers. He said:
“I don’t know why so many of you are here, but I appreciate it. I am just a normal guy who likes to game a lot. This is crazy, guys. Just crazy.”
shroud
shroud said he expected about 150,000 or 200,000 viewers, not that many.
This was the stream: At the beginning of the stream, there were some technical issues. Even shroud made his viewers wait before things started. Later he said he wanted to change the resolution from 720 to 1080 without closing the channel, which caused problems and the delay.
But unlike Dr Disrespect, who staged his return to YouTube with a huge lead-up, clips, and a bombastic intro, shroud was just back and played Valorant. The shooter gained significant momentum on Twitch due to his presence.
shroud appeared on camera with a beard and glasses and said that he could now be called “Uncle shroud”. He liked that.
He also threw a small jab at Dr Disrespect:
“I’m not going to come out here with a crazy 7-minute intro driving a Lamborghini down the street and yelling at kids like an old man. I think a lot of you were expecting that, and I’m sorry about that.”
shroud
Shooter god currently prefers WoW
Actually he said he wanted to perform yesterday when the new Twitch deal was announced. But he had a WoW raid – that took priority. And he also didn’t want to show WoW in the first Twitch stream.
shroud has a thing for WoW. He is actually a well-known shooter player, but he plays the MMORPG for relaxation. Even if no one is watching him. It was like that back in 2019, in his last days on Twitch. He left everything behind, stopped streaming, just to peacefully play WoW – his true passion at that time:
Shroud is so into WoW Classic that he plays it but skips Twitch.
