The Twitch streamer Michael “shroud” Grzesiek (28) is mostly associated with games like CS:GO and Valorant. This is how he made a name for himself as a shooter god and “human aimbot”. However, the 28-year-old is also a passionate WoW nerd – apparently to the dismay of his viewers.
Shroud has built a huge community as a shooter streamer. In terms of followers, he is the fourth largest English-speaking Twitch streamer, with an average of 18,231 viewers this year (via sullygnome).
Shooter fans might remember the 28-year-old from his time with the eSports team Cloud9, with which he was active in CS:GO. Meanwhile, he is mainly known as a streamer and shines on Twitch with his skills. This is how the legend of shroud as a “human aimbot” came to be, even though his comeback as an eSports player didn’t go so well.
Shroud’s heart beats for World of Warcraft, meanwhile. Since the release of the latest expansion Dragonflight, shroud has already streamed over 100 hours – but his viewers don’t really want to see that.
The love triangle between WoW, shroud, and his fans
What is shroud’s relationship with WoW? Shroud loves WoW: Over the course of his career, he has streamed over 1,000 hours from Azeroth. But his fans don’t really share this love. As early as 2019, shroud is said to have lost up to 3,000 subscribers when he played WoW Classic.
What’s the problem? Since the release of Dragonflight, WoW has once again firmly got a hold over shroud and the story seems to be repeating itself: In his stream on December 19, up to 16,000 people watched shroud play Overwatch 2.
With Valorant, he had up to 14,900 viewers – when shroud then switched to WoW, only 11,300 were watching, and on average only about 8,000 viewers were present. This seems to happen frequently – if it’s up to his fans, shroud should probably play everything but WoW. On average, only half as many people watch him compared to Valorant (via sullygnome).
Shroud says: “I don’t care”
How does shroud deal with the situation? The streamer seems to see all this quite calmly. He’s probably been around for too long to let fluctuating viewer numbers unsettle him. Or the love for WoW is simply too strong:
Valorant is not bad. It’s just, it’s simply not WoW. World of Warcraft is my favorite game of all time. It kills my channel, but I don’t f***ing care because I get loot in the game that I love.
So there’s no end in sight for shroud’s WoW streams. He’s not completely unsuccessful with it: After all, shroud is currently in the top 10 of the most viewed English-speaking streamers for the MMORPG (sullygnome).
Privately, shroud also likes to play around, such as with the card game Marvel Snap. His curiosity and ambition recently led him to resort to unscrupulous methods. But shroud is just too honest of a guy: After his cheating incident, the streamer was plagued by a guilty conscience.
Twitch streamer shroud cheats in exactly the way that streamers hate – “I had to win”
