Who is this anyway?

• From 2014 to 2021 tarik was a professional CS:GO player and had his greatest successes with Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses
• He is US-American of Turkish origin and already represented both countries in the world championships in Counterstrike
• tarik has been on Twitch since 2012, but it wasn’t until his pro career ended in 2021 that he really took off there
• He now has over 2 million followers there, reaching an average of 36,000 viewers – in July 2022 he even recorded a peak of 187,886 viewers (via sullygnome)
• tarik is also on the rise in other ways, now he was signed by the e-sports organization Sentinels – but not as a player

2022 seems to be the year of tarik

Here’s how 2022 is going for tarik: After ending his pro career in CS:GO, tarik switched to tactical shooter Valorant and exploded on Twitch with it. Together with his current colleague shroud, he is one of the biggest streamers of the riot shooter.

For comparison, he streams less than half as much as xQc, the biggest streamer on Twitch, but can generate a similar increase in followers. He also streams slightly less compared to shroud, has only a fraction of the followers, but averages almost as many viewers (via sullygnome).

That’s why tarik is “the new shroud”: Some parallels are obvious. Like tarik, shroud used to be a CS:GO pro, then became a full-time streamer on Twitch and was insanely successful there – shroud now has over 10 million followers on the streaming platform.

But the two have another thing in common: as former shooter pros, they seem almost unbeatable compared to normal Twitch streamers. Shroud therefore made a name for himself as a “human Aimbot”.

On reddit, there was discussion about a possible pro career in Valorant as early as 2021, when tarik’s CS:GO career was just ending. He was simply “too good to be a content creator”. Tarik holds the highest rank in Valorant, Radiant, and is a regular on the leaderboards.

Now tarik has also been signed by shroud’s Team Sentinels, as the organization announced via Twitter on August 30. However, tarik will not be an active player, but will join the “content creator” team.

tarik confirmed this in one of his streams, but also said he is available for the professional valorant roster should he be called upon. For now, however, he is expected to represent the organization in his streams. For example, at the “Valorant Champions” starting today, August 31.

To that end, tarik says he’ll continue to be himself and won’t treat the team with kid gloves either: “I’ll critically evaluate what I see and how they perform.” This should give the team “some fire” and push them even further (via YouTube).

That’s why Sentinels is the right choice for tarik: Before his Valorant days, tarik was known more as the “shirtless CS:GO streamer” (via reddit). This “memehood” would be shared by Sentinels. In addition, people there are very direct, which suits him.

Sentinels wants to dominate Valorant with tarik’s support

That’s why Sentinels is on a shopping spree right now: 2022 Sentinels has already bought 2 of the biggest Valorant streamers and there seems to be a strategy behind it. Although shroud could not save the rather poor – Season and Sentinels missed the playoffs, but they have big plans.

As Sentinels CEO Rob Moore shared in an interview with American site Dot Esports, the organization is “eager to dominate Valorant the way TSM and G2 did for League.” They now seem to be one step closer to that goal.

From August 31 to September 18, the second edition of the “Valorant Champions” tournament will be held in Istanbul. Even though Sentinels won’t be playing, the team is somehow represented by tarik. He will broadcast the tournament live on site and commentate.

While tarik really took off on Twitch in 2022, German streamers are struggling to keep up the success from the lockdown days.

German Twitch streamer MontanaBlack loses 43% of his viewers in 180 days