One of the biggest winners on Twitch in 2022 is former CS:GO pro Tarik “tarik” Celik (26). Now he is making a career with Valorant following in the footsteps of the “shooter god” Michael “shroud” Grzesiek (28).
Who is he anyway?
- From 2014 to 2021, tarik was a professional CS:GO player and celebrated his greatest successes with Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses
- He is a Turkish-American and represented both countries at the Counter-Strike World Championships
- Although tarik has been on Twitch since 2012, he really took off only after the end of his professional career in 2021
- By now he has over 2 million followers there, averages 36,000 viewers – in July 2022 he even recorded a peak of 187,886 viewers (via sullygnome)
- Also, tarik is on the rise, as he has just been signed by the e-sports organization Sentinels – however, not as a player
Sentinels already made waves in 2022 with the comeback of the “human aimbot” shroud. He wanted to give it one more shot at 28. You can read about how that went here.
2022 seems to be the year of tarik
This is how 2022 is going for tarik: After the end of his professional career in CS:GO, tarik switched to the tactical shooter Valorant, and thus exploded on Twitch. Together with his current colleague shroud, he is one of the biggest streamers of the Riot shooter.
For comparison: he streams less than half as much as xQc, the biggest streamer on Twitch, but can generate a similar influx of followers. Also compared to shroud, he is on air a bit less frequently, has only a fraction of the followers, but averages nearly the same number of viewers (via sullygnome).
This is why tarik is “the new shroud”: Some parallels are obvious. Like tarik, shroud was previously a CS:GO pro, then became a full-time streamer on Twitch and was incredibly successful there – shroud now has over 10 million followers on the streaming platform.
But the two have another commonality: As former shooter pros, they seem almost unbeatable compared to normal Twitch streamers. Shroud made a name for himself as the “human aimbot”.
On reddit, there was already discussion in 2021, when tarik’s CS:GO career was just ending, about a possible pro career in Valorant. He was simply “too good to be a content creator.” Tarik holds the highest rank in Valorant, Radiant, and is regularly found on the leaderboards.
Now tarik has also been signed by shroud’s team Sentinels, as announced by the organization on Twitter on August 30. However, tarik is not supposed to appear as an active player but rather join the “content creator” team.
tarik confirmed this in one of his streams but also said that he is available for the professional Valorant roster should he be called upon. For now, however, he is supposed to represent the organization in his streams, such as at the “Valorant Champions” starting today, August 31.
Regarding this, tarik says that he will remain himself and will not handle the team with kid gloves: “I will critically evaluate what I see and how they perform.” That should give the team “some fire” and push them even further (via YouTube).
This is why Sentinels is the right choice for tarik: Before his time in Valorant, tarik was known more as the “shirtless CS:GO streamer” (via reddit). This “meme quality” would be shared by Sentinels. Furthermore, they are very direct, which suits him.
Sentinels aims to dominate Valorant with tarik’s support
This is why Sentinels is currently on a shopping spree: In 2022, Sentinels has already acquired 2 of the biggest Valorant streamers, and there seems to be a strategy behind this. Although shroud could not save the rather dull season and Sentinels missed the playoffs, they have big plans.
As Sentinels’ CEO, Rob Moore, stated in an interview with the American site Dot Esports, the organization is “committed to dominating Valorant as TSM and G2 did for League.” They seem to be one step closer to this goal.
From August 31 to September 18, the second edition of the “Valorant Champions” tournament will take place in Istanbul. Even though Sentinels will not be participating, the team will somehow be represented by tarik. He will be broadcasting and commenting on the tournament live on site.
While tarik really took off on Twitch in 2022, German streamers struggle to maintain the successes from the lockdown days.
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