Last summer, top-earning professional video gamer Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek paid a heavyweight $9.4 million for a hilltop mansion within Hidden Hills, the guard-gated San Fernando Valley city that is also home to Drake, Madonna, Lil Wayne, Kanye West and nearly every member of the Kardashian brood. So it’s not surprising that the Toronto native, 27, has just sold his other multimillion-dollar home, a two-story affair in the bustling Orange County city of Irvine, about 70 miles southeast of Hidden Hills.
Located in the recently developed Great Park, a family-friendly enclave of upscale tract houses, the Irvine home was built in 2018 using the coveted “Crescendo Collection Residence 1” tract floorplan, per the listing. Shroud bought the house that same year, paying $1.9 million, and subsequently spent “almost $1 million” in upgrades — again, per the listing.
Among those upgrades were $500,000 in landscaping, including the installation of a big pool/spa combo out back and huge swathes of AstroTurf, plus a state-of-the-art solar system, custom lighting throughout, motorized window shades and custom wall treatments.
All that spending appears to have paid off for Shroud, or at least netted him a bigger return than expected. The house was put on the market and sold within a month for $3.3 million, a fat $500,000 over the ask and one of the priciest deals ever inked in this particular neighborhood. Records reveal the spendy new owners are a married pair of medical doctors, one of them an allergist/immunologist and the other a plastic surgeon. Martin Mania at Agencyone held the listing; Joseph Chow at Redfin repped the buyers.
So how does a 20-something gamer afford this sort of lifestyle? Shroud isn’t exactly your average gamer, for starters. The frequently foul-mouthed streamer has been playing professionally since his late teens, and has amassed a whopping 10 million followers on Twitch, making his the sixth most-followed account on the platform.
Back in 2019, Shroud briefly departed Twitch to sign on with Microsoft’s Mixer app. Mixer subsequently struggled and was soon folded into Facebook Gaming. But Shroud refused to join Facebook, and Microsoft was forced to buy out his contract, reportedly paying him a $10 million lump sum — after which he quickly returned to Twitch.
Beyond that, Forbes says Shroud hauled in $12.5 million during 2019 alone, prior to the contract buyout. And his income has almost certainly soared since then, as his views and follower count have continued to skyrocket. Much of that increased success is likely due to the Covid quarantines, which left millions of people bored at home.