Michael “shroud” Grzesiek is a well-known streamer on Twitch and an authority in the field of “shooter” games. He was actually expected to promote and constantly showcase the new shooter “Spectre Divide” on Twitch, where he acts as the frontman for the game. But shroud fell in love with Valve’s new MOBA hybrid, Deadlock, and now his true passion is beckoning: MMORPGs. He has become enamored with Throne and Liberty (Steam).
This was the expectation of shroud:
- The new shooter “Spectre Divide” was supposed to be shroud’s new game. He praised Spectre Divide to the highest degree. He even went so far as to call Spectre Divide “his game”, as if it belonged to him: His video “Our New Game is finally out” has 198,000 views on YouTube.
- However, shroud is only the frontman of the game and advises the developers on design decisions.
- As the CEO of the company states, shroud is best able to help the company by discussing with them how Spectre Divide can be best for players and streamers.
shroud promotes his game on Twitch, then abandons it for hotter games
This is the problem: Even though it sounds completely different from what the CEO said in an interview with IGN: It was actually already thought that shroud would serve as a major draw for Spectre Divide on Twitch, and in the beginning, that worked:
shroud played 88 hours in the game and had nearly 50,000 viewers at its peak.
But that didn’t last long. During the release phase of Spectre Divide, shroud fell in love with Valve’s MOBA-shooter hybrid Deadlock and began spending more and more time there:
- Starting from August 16, 2024, he almost completely switched to Deadlock and almost completely ignored “his shooter”.
- Since September 24, 2024, however, it has also become the end for Deadlock, and shroud has succumbed to his true passion: MMORPGs. Because even though shroud is such a shooter crack, deep down, he is a real MMORPG enthusiast, as has been known for a long time.
Instead of showcasing his shooter, shroud is currently doing this:
shroud dominates 3 games on Twitch
In the last 90 days, he has:
- Spent 171 hours in Deadlock
- Spent 101 hours in Throne and Liberty
- And only 88 in Spectre Divide.
shroud is actually the world’s largest streamer for Throne and Liberty and for Spectre Divide in the last 90 days. He is only in second place for Deadlock, with the Russian Recrent just ahead of him, albeit by a narrow margin.
And how is “his shooter?” Spectre Divide is not doing well at all:
- Without shroud, viewer hours on Twitch have dropped by 80%.
- On Steam, player counts have fallen from an average of 8,400 in September to 5,500 in October.
- And the company has already had to lay off 13 employees.
Although the company’s CEO claims that this is not a problem, that the game is not dead, and that they have the resources to continue its development. Season 1 is even supposed to start in December 2024 or January 2025 to revitalize the game. Additionally, they plan to work on the performance, but it doesn’t seem to be going super well.
The problem is that shroud is already being asked why he doesn’t play his own game, and at the moment, he is lacking arguments for that. If he doesn’t even play it, why should his fans do so? Viewer asks shroud why he prefers to showcase the new shooter on Steam instead of his own game on Twitch – Bad mistake
