Shroud

Who is Shroud?

Shroud is a Canadian Twitch streamer, YouTuber and former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro player. Shroud’s real-life name is Michael Grzesiek, and he was born on June 2nd, 1994, in Toronto, Ontario. 

In his life, Shroud got a lot of names, the human aimbot, king of Reddit, king of Twitch but most importantly, the king of FPS games. Shroud is a real gamer. He can pick up any game and adapt to it. 

Shroud is most known for playing first-person shooter games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Escape from Tarkov, Valorant, Apex Legends, DayZ, H1Z1 and even played Rust on OfflineTV’s server with fellow streamers.

Personal life of Shroud

Shroud got introduced to gaming by his father, who built every PC they ever owned. His father shared that Shroud used to sit on his lap because he was always so tiny that he just played and goofed around. Things took turn when Shroud’s father introduced him to Counter-Strike: Source “He picked up the game in a couple of months, and then it was just pointless for me to sit with him and help him play.” 

Shroud is currently dating Hannah’  Bnans’ Kennedy. She was born on July 2nd, 1991, in Ohio, United States. Before her streaming career, Bnans used to work as a digital marketing manager. After deciding to chase her dream as a streamer, Bnans streamed mostly FPS games like PUBG, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege and Destiny and Destiny 2.

Shroud and Bnans started hanging out together on and off streams. In April 2019, Shroud and Bnans together revealed that they were dating. 

Before Bnans started dating Shroud, she was a semi-successful streamer with a decent fanbase and was well-known among the FPS community. Since the two started dating, Bnans regularly appeared on Shroud’s stream, and the pair is in a live-in relationship. 

There is no info about planned marriage so far.

Shroud’s Esport history

Shroud was introduced to gaming by his father at a very young age. He picked up the basics of Counter-Strike: Source very quickly but stopped playing later. Things changed when a friend gifted him on Steam Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Shroud started streaming in 2011, and according to him, he had zero viewers for almost a year. 

Thanks to his streams, Shroud was scouted and became a part of several ESEA teams, Exertus eSports and Manajuma. Shroud was offered a spot in compLexity as a stand-in and later competed for Cloud9 in August 2014.

Shroud has a lot of mentionable moments in his pro career for Cloud9. He leads Cloud9 to first place at ESL Pro League Season 4 and second place in ESL One Cologne 2017. He was an all-star of the team, and later when new members changed, they looked up to him. He helped to train them and started playing more in the back. Shroud was no longer all-star, and he wasn’t worried to admit it.

When PUBG came out, Shroud started streaming it, and he was just smashing. This might seem like a good thing, but many fans weren’t pleased. His questionable performances in CS tournaments didn’t help it. Fans were mad that he is not practising CS: GO, plays PUBG instead, and Reddit was full of it. On April 18th, 2018, Shroud officially announced that he is stepping down from the Cloud9 roster and wants to see where his streamer career will lead him.

Cloud9 tournaments, including Shroud

• 2017, July 9th Placed 2nd S-Tier Offline Tournament ESL One: Cologne Cloud9 0:3 SK gaming $40,000
• 2017, June 25th Placed 3th-4th S-Tier Offline Tournament Esports Championship Series Season 3 - Finals Cloud9 0:2 FaZe Clan $65,000
• 2017, June 11th Placed 1st A-Tier Offline Tournament Americas Minor Championship-Kraków 2017 Cloud9 2:1 Immortals $30,000
• 2016 October 30th Placed 1st S-Tier Offline Tournament ESL Pro League Season 4-Finals Cloud9 2:1 SK Gaming $200,000
• 2016 September 18th Placed 2nd S-Tier Offline Tournament DreamHack Open Bucharest 2016 Cloud9 0:2 Virtus.pro $20,000
• 2016 July 21st Placed 5th-8th S-Tier Offline Tournament ELEAGUE Season 1 Cloud9 1:2 Natus Vincere $50,000
• 2016 June 25th Placed 5th-6th S-Tier Offline Tournament Esports Championship Series Season 1-Finals Cloud9 0:2 Team SoloMid $65,000
• 2015 November 15th Placed 1st A-Tier Offline Tournament iBUYPOWER Cup Cloud9 2:1 Team Liquid $65,000
• 2015 July 5th Placed 2nd S-Tier Offline Tournament ESL ESEA Pro League Season 1-Finals Cloud9 1:3 Fnatic $60,000
• 2015 June 22nd Placed 1st S-Tier Online Tournament ESL ESEA Pro League Season 1-North America Cloud9 19/3 Grp.S. $18,000

Shroud’s Streaming and content creation

After quitting his streamer career, Shroud decided to become a professional streamer. Shroud is known as the king of FPS. Anything involving putting a crosshair on an enemy’s head is Shrouds game. If Shroud plays your game, it is highly likely it will be the number 1 watched game on the platformer. Even though he is the human aimbot, he doesn’t limit himself to play only these kinds of games. He also loves MMORPGs and even played Fall Guys or Among us. 

He has streamed for over 9,100 hours on the platform and has acquired over 455 million total views. On March 10th, 2019, he reached 100,000 Twitch subscribers. He gained another 14,000 the next day, making his subscriber count more than double the runner-up streamer: Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar.

Shroud had an ongoing rivalry with another top tier streamer, Ninja. These two did things completely differently and maintained a really high audience.  Firstly Ninja, riding the Fortnite hype wave and doing anything to please his fans. On the other side, we have Shroud, a completely chill guy who just does what he wants to do.

Things changed when Mixer came into play. The new streaming platform offered Ninja an astronomical deal of $30,000,000. Everyone thought that was it, and Shroud was gonna become the King of Twitch. Shroud even stated on one of his streams, “Hey man, Ninja’s gone... It’s all me, baby. Gotta take advantage”. Things massively shifted again when Mixxer offered Shroud a $10,000,000 exclusive deal.

So Ninja and Shroud were gone. They didn’t get that much audience. Some people, even though they quit streaming and didn’t even know they just switched to a different platform. Things got even worse when Valorant came out. Viewers could randomly get a  key for the closed beta for watching streamers playing Valorant, but only on Twitch. Shroud loved the game, and it looked like the two made for each other.

On June 22nd, 2020, Microsoft announced that it would be shutting down Mixer and instead partner with Facebook Gaming. People still argue if these deals with huge streamers were what caused the fall of Mixer. Many said Mixer should have focused on supporting smaller streamers, developing their own community from scratch, instead of buying out the biggest streamers of their competition. Shroud received an offer from Facebook Gaming to continue his contract with Mixer, but he was rejected.

After posting on his Twitter, “I love you guys and am figuring out my next steps,” Shroud took a one month break before returning his home, Twitch, stronger than ever. His first stream peaked at incredible 515,000 viewers.

How much does Shroud earn on Twitch?

Shroud has over 9.1 million followers and earns money through donations, advertisements and donations. He is known to have the best deal on subscribers and makes 70% of the profits. Forever tier 1 sub, which costs $5, Shroud gets $3.5. 

Streamers on Twitch also make money from advertisements. The real number is not known but is estimated from $10 to $20 for every 1000 viewers. 

Shroud makes an estimated $50,000 per month on Twitch. He has over 9,000 subscribers on average. With $3.50 per subscriber, Shroud should be making something over $30,000.

Shroud streams almost every day and has a stable fanbase. His streams always hold somewhere around 30,000 viewers. With $10-$20 per 1,000 views, Shroud should be making somewhere between $8,000 to $16,500 from Twitch advertisement.

Streamers also receive money through donations when their viewers decide to send some. It’s hard to estimate streamers income from donations, but according to some sites, Shroud is getting $250 to $1000 per week from donations. On the high end, Shroud makes around $4000 per month from donations.

How much money does Shroud make on YouTube?

Shroud has two YouTube channels. The first one is for his videos with highlights for his streams, and the second one is for less edited records of his streams.

Shroud’s more popular channel amassed almost 7 million subscribers. These channels upload around 6 videos per week and get 300,000 views per video.

YouTube pays around $3 per 1000 views. With 11,000,000 views every month, Shroud’s estimate should be around $33,000 through YouTube advertisements per month.

How much does Shroud earn per month? Net worth!

Shroud’s estimated net worth is $7,000,000 USD. In total, Shroud makes over $83,000 per month from his activities on Twitch and YouTube. Of course, YouTube and Twitch are not Shroud’s only source of income. He has other sources of income, such as sponsorships and his merch.

Logitech is probably the biggest Shroud’s sponsor. He collaborated with Logitech and created his own brand of gaming equipment, mouse, keyboard and headset. He also has sponsorships with postmates and Nitrado. Shroud likely receives a commission for every purchase that is made through his link or discount code. Shroud has merch available at jinx.

The most important deal is the one he made with Mixer. Shroud signed an exclusive deal with Microsoft company for $10 million dollars. When Mixer shut down, Facebook gaming offered Shroud a deal of almost double what he had with Mixer, but Shroud refused. He decided to move back home to Twitch.

Interesting facts about Shroud

• He is a huge fan of summit1G and had a lot of his merch. Sadly he lost most of his OG T-shirts when his case got lost at an airport.
• On August 12th, 2020, he reached his all-time high of 516,289 viewers on a single stream.
• His height is 5' 6'' or 168cm.
• His weight is 65 Kg or 143lbs.
• His zodiac sign is Gemini.
• Shroud is one of the most popular players who actively streams, regularly pulling in more than 40,000 viewers.
• His original alias was “eclipse,” but later, when the name was taken, he changed to “shroud” as it was the first synonym of “eclipse” he could find. This is why his former name on Twitch was mEclipse.
• He was chosen to be in the “All Star” MLG Columbus match for the American side.
• With the popularity of PUBG at the time, Shroud was streaming to over 20,000 viewers by the end of 2017. His audience continued to follow him as he explored a variety of games such as Fortnite, Apex Legends, Call of Duty, and more.
• His viewer count continued to surge over the years, and on August 12th, 2020, he reached his all-time high of 516,289 viewers on a single stream.
• In September 2021, Michael paid $9.4 million for a mansion in a gated community in Hidden Hills, California.
• Shroud also owns a home in Irvine, California, which he bought in 2018
• Both his parents are polish that immigrated to Canada.
• He only knows few polish words.
• His parents split up when he was 11.
• He has a mixed Husky-German Shepherd named Troy.
• He has a cat named Benji.
• Shroud never goes to the beach, even though he lives in California. According to his words. He was there once walking his dog.
• His favourite food is California style burrito.
• He is a heavy sleeper. 
• He is not a fan of Halloween and only celebrates it in-game.
• He found a WW2 gun in his mother house once, but except that, he never came close to a gun.
• He was a shy kid and gained confidence through streaming.
• He loves board games.
• He watches The Office before he goes to sleep and has seen it multiple times already.
• His father is his number 1 fan and never misses his match.
• He was a Wow addict before he went all-in on CS: GO.
• He was not impressed by CS: Source.
• His three least favourite maps in CS: GO are Train, Mirage and Inferno.
• His favourite video game series is Fallout.
• He got inspired by Summit1G.
• He almost quit streaming after he got rejected 3 times by Twitch for becoming a partner.
• He became “King of Reddit” thanks to his clips being at the top of the charts all the time.
• He didn’t tell his parents when he joined Cloud9 because he thought they wouldn’t understand.
• He randomly hosted different small streamers to help them get money.
• He once stated on Twitter that chocolate is not candy.
• His craziest fan interaction is when one of his fans asked to sign his stomach.
• He stopped streaming PUBG in 2019 because the game was dead.
• He loves Cyberpunk and wants to play it again when it’s more finished.
• DrDisrespect called him the best PC player of all time.
• Ninja called him the best aimer.
• Shroud got banned from PUBG from playing with a cheater.
• Magazine PC gamer compared him to Michael Jordan.
• He won the content creator of the year award at the 2019 game awards.