Elon Musk, the king of video games? Well, maybe not.

At first glance, the statement seems unlikely: in addition to being the richest man in the world, CEO of numerous companies and key councilor of President Trump, Elon Musk says he is also a world -class video game player.

It is a statement that Mr. Musk has repeated over the years. He has an account on X, his social media platform, dedicated to the publication of the highlights of his gameplay. He streamed with some of the best competitive video game players in the world on platforms such as Twitch. He even engraved his name in the global rankings of some games.

But last week, the community of players who had been trying to impress for some time turned against him. It all started with a live streaming by Mr. Musk playing Path of Exile 2, a popular action role -playing game known for his difficulty. Although his report showed that he had gained one of the highest levels of the game, his gameplay seemed that of an amateur.

The internet investigators made videos on YouTube and turned to the Reddit thread to analyze his gameplay, exposing the errors that 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, like Monday morning, while he was at the inauguration of Mr. Trump. The state of the account of Mr. Musk indicated that he had access to the game and inside a “map”, which meant that it was possible, even if not of course, that someone on the account was playing while Mr. Musk He was sitting behind Mr. Trump.

“How are you?” He asked for a streamer while looking at a divided screen of the game and Mr. Musk at the Rotondo del Capitol, while Trump was suited. “How do you find yourself in the sulfuric caves right now, Elon?”

Thousands of players turned to X to accuse Musk to “enhance” his account, or to pay updates on third -party websites or to take people who played on his accounts for him. It was the videogame equivalent of the stolen value.

It is rare that something that the billionaire touches, whether it is launching rockets or killing digital goatmen, causes other than controversy. But for Musk, the “hardcore player” is a fundamental part of the identity he has tried to project: a multifaceted nerd that is in the same magnate parts of the car, pioneer of space and serial entrepreneur of technology.

Although it has become one of the most powerful people of the Trump administration, he did everything to demonstrate that he appreciates the culture of video games. And in Mr. Musk’s very online and very male fandom, the great game skills are something to admire.

“He wants people to really admire him,” said Rod Breslau, a longtime video game and consultant. “He must be good with video games in order to be cool with all fans, all his technological events, all the people who are part of his technological world, players and artificial intelligence.”

Mr. Musk has pushed for years for a high profile in the world of games. According to the biography of the billionaire written by Walter Isaacson, Musk requested a role in Cyberpunk 2077, the much publicized futuristic video game franchise that debuted in 2020. (His ex -girlfriend Claire Boucher, who plays music as Grimes and with whom He has three children, played a character in the game.)

He broadcast himself in himself while playing Diablo 4, the threatening and killing series that beat all sales records when he was published. And he tried the game of role of great success Elden Ring, calling him “the most beautiful art” that he had ever seen in an X post.

But the most avid players were skeptical. In 2022, Musk raised his eyebrows in the players’s community when he published a photo of the “Build” of his character of Elden Ring, or the assorted types of equipment that players can use to customize their characters. Fans of the game called it a “garbage construction”, made up of a series of meaningless equipment choices made by someone who seemed to have no idea how to play.

Mr. Musk spoke of his games in a November interview with Joe Rogan, the famous Podcaster. Mr. Musk mentioned an unofficial ranking that showed him classified as one of the 20 best players of Diablo 4 in the world.

The players wondered how this was possible. The amount of time needed to acquire some of the objects and skills that Mr. Musk’s character had obtained – up to 10 hours of play per day, according to some estimates – did not seem to be in line with his travel program and Events.

Mr. Musk responded to skeptics in X posts – some of whom then canceled – and attacked some critics for their game skills.

But a week ago, he admitted to Nicholas Hayes, a YouTube video game character that he actually enhanced his accounts.

In the messages that Hayes shared in a YouTube video, he asked the billionaire if he had enhanced and Mr. Musk responded with a 100%EMOJI.

“It’s impossible to beat players in Asia if you don’t do it,” Musk said in the messages. Subsequently he republished the video on his Feed X. He did not respond to requests for comment.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Hayes said he was not surprised by revelation. He played Diablo with Mr. Musk in the past, and recalled moments in which the billionaire has hinted that he had not earned his character’s equipment on his own, or that another player had given him.

“I mean, it’s Elon Musk,” said Mr. Hayes. “If you play with him, you will probably give him a lot of things.”

However, Musk defended his aptitude for the game and said in the messages to Hayes that enhancement is a common thing among Diablo’s elite players. And two of the mothers of his children went down to his defense.

“Only for my personal pride, I would like to say that the father of my children was the first American druid of Diablo to clean up the Slaughter of Zir and ended that season as the best in the United States,” wrote Mrs. Boucher on X , referring to one of the difficult underground maps of the game. “I observed these things with my eyes.”

Shivon Zilis, who worked with Mr. Musk in many of his companies and is known to be the mother of three of his children, last week published a video in which Mr. Musk plays Diablo. In the answers he told a memory of when he played for 17 hours on Christmas day of 2023.

“He took breaks for family meals and Christmas gifts, but he was too excited to sleep, and that’s how he spent both time with children and a 17 -hour job on Aoz that day,” he has written, referring to a challenge in Diablo. “It was a joy to see him have fun so much!”

The enhancement violates the terms and conditions of Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2. But the third -party updates market is robust and players can choose between numerous websites to update their accounts, most of which charges thousands of dollars .

A spokesman for Blizzard, the publisher of Diablo, refused to comment. Grinding Gear Games, the publisher of Path of Exile, did not respond to a commentary request.

Some players of Path of Exile who have known Mr. Musk for decades as a passionate player were disappointed to discover that he had paid to improve his account, including Dennis Fong, one of the first professional E-Sport players.

In an interview, Mr. Fong said he played the Quake video game on the same servers as the Stanford University of Musk in the 90s. (Mr. Musk was not a student.) “He was respectable,” said Mr. Fong of Musk, who used the pseudonym Zip2, the name of the company he had recently started. “Not one of the best in the world.”

When Musk boasted of his diablo gameplay on X and on Mr. Rogan podcast last year, Fong said he wanted to believe it was true, since Diablo is generally considered an easy game without a lot of competitive scene. But looking at the gameplay of Path of Exile, Fong said, it was “obvious that he had no idea what he was going on.”

Mr. Breslau said Mr. Musk reminded him of a teenager. “In this sense,” added Breslau, “is a real player”.

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