Shroud on going pro in VALORANT: “I would love to compete again, but that jeopardizes the stream”

When shroud announced on April Fools’ Day that he was going pro in VALORANT, there might’ve been more than a few grains of truth hidden in there. There’s no smoke without fire and shroud has revealed that the competitive passion still burns within him. The reason for quenching it? His stream.

The streamer has made his admiration for VALORANT clear, going so far as to call it “one of the greatest games” he’s played in a long while.

In a video recently uploaded to his second YouTube channel, shroud talked about his love for VALORANT and streaming. But he also mentioned the insane time constraints that he’d face if he tried to wade into the competitive circuit again.

“I wanna be competitive and I wanna like, go far in the game but I know I can’t,” shroud said. “I would love to compete again, but that jeopardizes the stream.”

Shroud said that due to his competitive history, it’s hard to treat VALORANT simply as an activity “for fun.” He explained that it wasn’t about skill or for lack of trying, though. Instead, he said he’d lose all his time for himself by trying to juggle his responsibilities.

The streamer would have to make sure he both streamed and practiced the “right amount of hours.” Shroud mentioned that it was theoretically possible to “do both,” but he wouldn’t be able to “do anything else.”

The former CS:GO pro has first-hand experience with this subject from his time competing in Valve’s tactical shooter. The streamer then added that he doesn’t “really want to do that again.”

“I just love what I do now, and I prefer it so much more,” shroud said. “But it just sucks because VALORANT‘s a great game and I want to follow it all the way through, but it’s not casual enough.”

Shroud said VALORANT, in its current state, is a competitive game through and through, even in an unrated mode. Bringing up CS:GO once again, shroud cited the ability to “jump into a random server” and just “do something,” instead of being forced into a large time commitment.

Fortunately, this problem might be rectified in the future. While VALORANT only offers a tactical five-vs-five game mode right now, Riot Games have mentioned its openness to “exploring new modes post-launch.”

Related: 8 game modes we want Riot to add to VALORANT

While shroud is most likely going to continue streaming other games, he knows that Riot’s FPS is one title he’s going to keep coming back to.

“I have VALORANT and it’s always going to be there as like a fallback,” shroud said. “Like, hey, I don’t know what to play, fuck it, I’ll do a couple games of VALORANT.”