At first glance, the claim is unlikely: In addition to being the richest man in the world, the chief executive of many companies and key adviser to President Trump, Elon Musk says he is also a world -class video game player.
It is a claim that Mr Musk has repeated all these years. He has an account on X, his platform on social media, dedicated to the posting of his game’s snapshots. He has streaming with some of the world’s leading competitive video game players on platforms such as Twitch. He has even been named his name on the world’s top of some games.
But last week, the community of players who have been trying to impress for a long time turned against him. Started with a live flow of Mr. Musk playing Path of Exile 2, a popular action role -playing game known for its difficulty. Although his account showed that he had won one of the highest levels of the game, his game looked like that of an amateur.
Internet technicians made a video on YouTube and went to Reddit’s threads to analyze his game, revealing mistakes a beginner would make. Other players stressed that Mr Musk’s Path of Exile account was active in times when he could not play himself, as Monday morning, while he was in the swearing -in of Mr Trump. Mr Musk’s account status showed that he was connected to the game and within a “map”, which meant that he was likely – if not certain – that someone was playing the game while Mr. Musk was sitting behind him Mr. Trump.
“How are you there?” A presenter asked while watching a separated screen of the game and Mr. Musk in the Rotunda Capitol, as Mr Trump was swearing. “How are you in Sulfuric Caverns right now, weird?”
Thousands of players went to X to accuse Mr Musk of “reinforcing” his account – that is, he paid for upgrades to third -party sites or hired people to play his accounts on his behalf. It was the gaming equivalent of stolen bravery.
It is rare something that the billionaire touches, whether it launches rockets or kills digital goatmen, resulting in anything other than a dispute. But for Mr Musk, the “hard -core player” is an essential part of the identity he tried to project: a multi -carpet -long pioneer of a cars, a pioneer in space and a serial technology businessman.
Although he has become one of the most powerful people in the Trump government, he has made every effort to show that he appreciates the culture of video games. And among Mr. Musk’s very online and very male fans, great gaming skills are something we need to admire.
“He wants people to really look at him,” said Rod Breslau, a long -term analyst and video game consultant. “He has to be good at video games so that he can be cool with all his fans, all his technology events, all the people in the world of technology, players and his artificial intelligence.”
Mr. Musk has been pushing for a high profile in the world of gaming for years. According to the biography of Walter Isaacson’s billionaire, Mr. Musk asked for a role in Cyberpunk 2077, the much -publicized, futuristic franchise video games that made his 2020 debut. with whom he has three children, they played a character in the game.)
He has streaming himself playing Diablo 4, the series that kills monsters that broke a sales record when he was released. And he has stunned the legendary role -playing game Elden Ring, calling the “most beautiful art” he had ever seen in a post on X.
But the hard -core players were skeptical. In 2022, Mr Musk lifted the eyebrows in the gaming community when he posted a photo of the “construction” of the character of Elden Ring, which are the different types of equipment that players can use to customize their characters. Fans of the game called it “rubbish”, consisting of a series of irrational equipment options made by someone who seemed to have no idea how to play the game.
Mr Musk discussed his game in an interview in November with Joe Rogan, the podcaster of celebrities. Mr Musk mentioned an informal ranking table that showed him that he was one of the top 20 Diablo 4 players in the world.
The players wondered how this was possible. The time it took to get some of the objects and abilities that Mr. Musk’s game had acquired – up to 10 hours of play a day, according to some estimates – did not seem to be in line with his travel and events program.
Mr Musk retained the denials in posts on X – some of which he later deleted – and attacked some of the critics for their own play abilities.
But a week ago, he admitted to Nicholas Hayes, a YouTube gaming personality, that he had actually reinforced his accounts.
In messages that Mr Hayes shared in a YouTube video, he asked the billionaire if he reinforced and Mr Musk responded with a 100%emoji.
“It is impossible to defeat players in Asia if you do not,” Mr Musk said in messages. He later re -posted the video in his own flow X. He did not respond to requests for commentary.
In an interview with the New York Times, Mr Hayes said he was not surprised by the revelation. He has played Diablo with Mr. Musk in the past and remembered moments when the billionaire suggesting that he had not won his own equipment or that another player had made a gift.
“I mean, it’s Elon Musk,” Mr Hayes said. “If you play with him, you’ll probably give him a lot of things.”
However, Mr Musk defended his gaming skills and told Mr Hayes’ messages that boosting is a common phenomenon among elite players in Diablo. And two of his children’s mothers have come to his defense.
“Just for my personal pride, I would like to state that my children’s father was the first American Dryid in Diablo to clear the zir slaughterhouse and ended that season as the best in the US,” Ms. Bauther wrote on X, referring In one of the difficult Dungeon’s Dungeon maps. “I really noticed these things with my eyes.”
Shivon Zilis, who has worked with Mr. Musk in many of his companies and is known to be a mother of three of his children, posted a video last week with Mr. Musk playing Diablo. In the answers, he narrated a memory when he played for 17 hours on Christmas Day 2023.
“She took breaks for family meals and Christmas presents, but she was very excited to sleep, so she made both children and 17 hours aoz push that day,” she wrote, referring to a challenge in Diablo. “It was a pleasure to see him so much fun with it!”
The aid violates the terms and conditions of Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2. However, the market for third -party upgrades is strong and players can choose from a number of websites to upgrade their accounts, most of whom charge Thousands of dollars.
A Blizzard spokesman, the publisher of Diablo, refused to comment. Grinding Gear Games, the publisher of Path of Exile, did not respond to a request for comment.
Some Path of Exile players who knew that Mr. Musk had been a greedy player for decades were disappointed when they discovered that he had paid to improve his account, including Dennis Fong, one of the first professional electronic sports players.
In an interview, Mr Fong told him that he was playing the Quake video game on the same servers of Stanford University with Mr. Musk in the 1990s. Fong for Mr. Musk, who used the name Zip2 screen, the name of the company he had recently founded. “Not one of the best in the world.”
When Mr. Musk was boasting about Diablo’s game on X and Podcast, Mr Rogan last year, Mr Fong said he wanted to believe it was true, as Diablo is generally considered an easy game without a big competitive scene. But watching the Path of Exile game, Mr. Fung said, “it was obvious that he had no idea what was happening.”
Mr Breslau said Musk was reminiscent of a teenager. “In this way,” Mr Breslau added, “he is a real player.”
