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Former Cloud9 CS:GO player Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek is currently one of the biggest content creators in the world and while he still retains a lot of the mechanical skills he has developed over the years, he feels that he is falling behind. With Shroud focusing on variety content and delving into games like New World, he feels that he cannot keep up when it comes to competing against pro players in competitive games like Valorant.
He has been playing Valorant for over a year and even competed in the Valorant Champions Tour qualifiers for fun, but he could not qualify for the Challengers events. However, he said that he does not enjoy playing with pros anymore because “you just can’t do it unless you play in that environment.”
Why Shroud does not like playing with Valorant pros
In a recent livestream Shroud was playing with Andrej "babybay" Francisty, who is signed with FaZe Clan. After they were done playing, the streamer jokingly expressed his disappointment. He said “It makes me so mad when I play with professional players because in my head I am as good as them but when I play with them I am not as good as them.”
He stated that he wants to be as good but he also knows that he “never will be” unless he plays a game like Valorant exclusively for a professional team. He feels aggravated because he wants to be as good but he feels it is not possible “unless you play in that environment, over and over and over again.”
While Shroud might not be as good as the top professional players, he is still mechanically one of the best content creators out there. The Canadian streamer was formerly competing in CS:GO with ESEA teams before making the switch to Complexity Gaming as a stand-in. After his time with Complexity Gaming he went on to join Cloud 9. He won ESL Pro League Season 4 in 2016 and eventually retired in 2018.
He quickly became one of the biggest gaming content creators while playing games like PUBG and Apex Legends. After Valorant released, he has been consistently playing the game over the past year. He even reached the rank of Radiant in April 2021, which during that span placed him amongst the top 0.1% of the players within the Valorant community.
