Shroud rages on Twitch over stream sniping in Valorant

Michael “shroud” Grzesiek may be one of the best FPS players, but no skills can completely protect someone from stream snipers. During a recent broadcast on Twitch, Shroud finally called out Valorant’s poor streamer mode. 

Live streaming an FPS game is no small feat, especially when you’re a popular streamer. There are many ways players can find out that you’re on the opposing team, which puts a target on the back of a big name like shroud. And that’s just the opponents. Teammates may troll, throw games, or just start chatting mid-game in a way that reduces the chances of winning.  

Stream sniping is still the worst problem, though. Opponents can easily observe a player’s habits, positioning, and tactics to gain an advantage in Valorant. This is precisely what happened with shroud on his recent broadcast, pushing him to rant it out on the live stream. 

During a match of Valorant, shroud’s game was doggedly pursued by a player who’d consistently know his position and kill him every single round. That led shroud to believe that he was matched up with a fan who’s sniping his game, and labeled it as “the most obvious bulls**t” of his life. shroud further conceded that the player was skilled and didn’t need to stream snipe to score kills on him, but the fact that he was good and was also a stream sniper made it impossible to enjoy the game.

“When it’s an actual good player…don’t get me wrong, that guy was good. That guy didn’t need to stream snipe. When it’s a good player, it’s impossible, it feels like I don’t stand a chance,” shroud said. 

He shut down the stream shortly after the outburst but tweeted out his problem with the streamer mode. 

Shsoud rages on stream over Valorant stream sniper

In Patch 1.07, Riot introduced streamer mode, which allows players to hide their names from non-party members so that other players will only see the names of the agent they’re playing. The purpose was to prevent streamers from getting sniped, since a name like “shroud” or “Ninja” would stand out in a profound way. However, shroud thinks that the current feature isn’t serving its purpose.

The streamer recommended that Riot should allow the players to change their name whenever they want, like in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. This will allow the streamer to enter every game with a new tag to effectively play incognito.

While streamer mode does hide your identity, shroud’s concern seems fair as players have dug up different ways to determine if they are matched up with a streamer. It remains to be seen if Riot Games will action on shroud’s complaints.