Popular North American VALORANT team Sentinels have signed streamer and former Counter: Strike Global Offensive player Tarik “tarik” Celik.
This update comes off of his recent co-streams for VALORANT Champions Tour content, where tarik has consistently helped the stream hit high viewership numbers thanks to his large following. Considering that tarik has an extensive tactical shooter esports career, he is joining as a streamer but has the potential to join the official Sentinels roster.
On top of the world, right where he should be@tarik officially joins Sentinels pic.twitter.com/olye21VE9x
— Sentinels (@Sentinels) August 30, 2022
tarik’s esports and streaming career
In CS:GO, tarik made waves on teams such as OpTic Gaming, Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses. On those teams, he won championships from as early as 2016 to as recent as 2020. That final win with Evil Geniuses against Team Liquid at the ESL One: Cologne 2020 online North American tournament was his last major win in CS:GO. He played competitively until mid-2021 when he was moved to the inactive roster.
He still competed in some tournaments until late 2021, but his primary focus was his streaming career. Tarik played VALORANT a lot on stream, with friends who included current and former VCT or CS:GO players. Following the VALORANT esports scene, he co-streamed games, most often NA matchups or international LANs. With a large viewership staying to watch his reactions to popular VCT matchups, the total numbers for VCT streams exploded. For example, his co-stream of the VCT NA LCQ in 2022 reached almost 100,000 viewers in the first week.
Dang, that was a wild one. Thanks to everyone who's been showin love & tuning in lately! pic.twitter.com/Hhurb9sJAK
— tarik (@tarik) August 5, 2022
It was fair to say that while the main VALORANT stream gained a lot of viewers, tarik helped stack even more. As a streamer who has experience and insight into the esports scene within VALORANT, joining Sentinels makes sense.
This isn’t even the only former CS:GO player turned streamer that joined Sentinels in recent times. Michael “shroud” Grzesiek made waves with his move to Sentinels. Tarik not only knows his now teammate but co-streamed his Sentinels and VALORANT esports debut against The Guard in that VCT 2022 NA LCQ.
Content creator or new blood?
The biggest question that comes out of this signing has to do with what role he will have for Sentinels. He could be another Shroud — another former esports pro who wants to compete again in VALORANT. At the same time, with his significant viewership and co-stream experience, Sentinels could’ve just picked him up as a big name to add to the content team.
What we do know, at least for 2022, is that tarik will be co-streaming Champions from Istanbul. As a fluent Turkish-American, Sentinels confirmed that they are sending him out to enjoy Champions, using that as a hint before his announcement.
just got the go ahead to send one of our co-streamers to Istanbul
but who?
— Sentinels (@Sentinels) August 29, 2022
For the end of this VCT season, Sentinels’ new signing will be doing what he is known for: co-streaming some of the best VALORANT players in the world.
