Shroud officially retired from professional CS: GO and left Cloud9

One of the most beloved monuments in the Counter-Strike community has decided to leave CS:GO.

Michael “shroud” Grzesiek announced his retirement from professional CS:GO on Twitter yesterday. Shroud not only left the tournaments, but he also left the Cloud9 organization. Shroud will still continue to stream on his Twitch channel, it’s just that he no longer represents Cloud9 from now on.

Here is to new beginnings. pic.twitter.com/6wqbttuWmY

— Michael Grzesiek (@C9shroud) April 18, 2018

“There is no book that will guide you to becoming a professional gamer. You grew up with no intention of it, knowing if this option even existed. Honestly, this is a journey you just can’t open that it happens again. When you were young, you only played games for passion, you didn’t plan to ‘go pro’, you just wanted to beat your friends or simply the boss. And when you wake up one day, and realize you have to write a retirement notice.”

Once a support player at Cloud9, Shroud has a reputation as one of the toughest site defenders in the world. Although he is not as bright as the other members of the team, Shroud always attracts fans with his highlights. Shroud is known as the “Reddit King” on /r/GlobalOffensive, thanks to his entertaining clips that are eye-catching and always on the front page.

At Cloud9, Shroud was on the team that brought CS:GO NA (North America) to the world between 2015 and 2017. He joined NA legends like Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert, Sean “[email protected] ” Gares, and Ryan” fREAKAZOID” Abadir, along with the trio – Jake “Stewie2k” Yip, Tim “autimatic” Ta, and Tyler “skadoodle” Latham. He and n0thing were replaced by Tarik Celik and Will “RUSH” Wierzba after the PGL Krarkow Major last August, ending an era of NA Counter-Strike.

“Yesterday’s stream was my last stream on behalf of the Cloud9 organization,” he continued. “Today, I officially leave Counter-Strike competitive… Over the past four months, you’ve spent over 1.3 million minutes watching me do what I love. You guys are the reason I can take it one step further, and I can’t wait to take it to the next level.”