‘Twisted my brain’: Shroud has streamed more of Valve’s MOBA shooter than his own game

Data has revealed FPS king Shroud has played more Deadlock on-stream than Spectre Divide, a game he’s had a hand in making alongside Mountaintop Studios, despite the latter’s high-profile release earlier this month. According to Shroud himself, there’s a good reason why—Deadlock has “twisted” his brain, and there’s seemingly no end in sight.

After a six-hour session in Spectre Divide that ended with a “sour” loss during a Sept. 6 stream, a visibly frustrated Shroud switched over to Deadlock to decompress—but before jumping into the game he let loose about how Deadlock has taken over everything from his stream to his casual gaming sessions. “I feel like this game changed the way I perceive myself and my peers. Deadlock has twisted my brain,” the streamer said.

A viewer, unaware he had just switched over, asked why he wasn’t streaming Spectre Divide—and they quickly became the next target of Shroud’s tirade. “I was just playing [Spectre Divide] for five fucking hours!” he said before standing up and walking off, taking a breather. He eventually returned and cracked on with a few matches of the MOBA shooter before calling it a day.

It’s not the first time he’s “praised” Deadlock in such a way; the 30-year-old FPS star has shared his love for the Valve shooter recently, dubbing it the first arena shooter that’s “actually good” and enjoying the depth and complexity it offers. This is all coming from a player who has said he “isn’t much of a MOBA guy.”

But Shroud, now known as “MOBA Mike” since his Deadlock debut, has invested an incredible amount of time into streaming the MOBA shooter. In the past 30 days, he’s clocked in just over 100 hours of Deadlock on-stream according to stats site Streams Charts—a full 30 hours more than Spectre Divide.

That’s not to say he’s enjoyed his time streaming his game Spectre Divide, which is enjoying moderate success since its launch on Sept. 3; it debuted to over 30,000 players on Steam on day one despite review bombing over the pricing of cosmetic skins.

At the end of the day, it’s Shroud’s stream, and what Shroud plays is entirely up to him—but it’s becoming clearer by the day Deadlock is leaving a lasting impression on him and his audience.