Sentinels’ ShahZaM Reveals Why He Moved From CS:GO to Valorant

Shahzeb ‘ShahZaM’ Khan is one of the most successful Valorant players. He is regarded as one of the best Sova players in the world and has found success with Sentinels throughout 2020 and 2021. The player has a shot at becoming a part of the first-ever VCT Champions at when the event comes to a close at the end of 2021. Sentinels is one of the most dominant forces in the Valorant esports scene with the team not dropping a single map throughout the VCT Masters Iceland event. ShahZaM revealed why he made a switch from CS:GO to Valorant after being with times like Tempo Storm, TSM and OpTic.

Why did ShahZaM move to Valorant

In an interview with host James Banks, he revealed that the North American esports scene was not where he wanted to be because of the franchising and exclusivity that was being brought into Counter Strike. He felt that everything was gravitating Europe and as someone who was in the North American scene for a very long time it was apparent to him the “NA CS:GO scene was on a downward trend.”

What motivated ShahZaM to jump into Valorant was Riot Games’ track record with League of Legends, which is one of the most well-established esports in the world with record-breaking viewer counts. ShahZaM felt that he needed to “go all out” and that he was willing to take the risk. He added he was ready to accept it if things didn’t work out.

He said that when he and his teammate SicK joined Valorant they wanted to “play with people who that weren’t like ‘one foot in, one foot out of the door’ thinking about CS. We knew that if we had people fully committed to the game, we could do something great.”

ShahZaM thinks that at face value the transition from CS:GO to Valorant seems easy because they’re both 5v5 FPS games but he feels that there is “a big learning curve and an un-learning curve”. He feels that there are multiple CS:GO habits that he needed to kick to get better at the game.

The player will be competing later this year at the VCT Champions event for which Sentinels qualified last month. He will be going up against other VCT Masters finalists in a bid to become a part of the first-ever Valorant world champions’ squad.