No excuses: gamers think they caught Musk cheating on Path of Exile 2
Famous man-child Elon Musk wants to belong everywhere, including gaming. But now, gamers are sure the billionaire doesn’t have any cred in the industry. His own stream of Path of Exile 2 gameplay allegedly gave him away.
Image by Getty Images/Bloomberg.
Famous man-child Elon Musk wants to belong everywhere, including gaming. But now, gamers are sure the billionaire doesn’t have any cred in the industry. His own stream of Path of Exile 2 gameplay allegedly gave him away.
Musk is certainly not one of us, the ordinary folk – but he almost desperately wants to demonstrate that he is, that he belongs. And, of course, showing your mettle in gaming is a way to prove your bona fides.
The billionaire decided to do just that. Last week, Musk livestreamed himself playing as a highly-ranked character of Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) game, Percy_Verence.
But other players immediately smelled blood because they were convinced that the very achievement – attaining a level 94 status within the game – belonged to someone else.
That’s because during the stream, Musk – who was commenting on whatever he was doing in the game – seemed totally unfamiliar with basic components of how the game works. One could try to get into details but, essentially, he simply demonstrated a basic lack of understanding of how the game actually works.
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Elon Musk showing his character's gear in Poe2. There is so much wrong, nobody who is able to get a character to level 90+ in hardcore could be so clueless pic.twitter.com/Jpm2X0QAw3
undefined Sophie Rights🏳️⚧️ (@JustSophie_____) January 8, 2025
So how did Musk manage to get that character to higher levels of PoE 2? The gamer community, especially strong on Reddit, soon had its verdict: he’s a fraud.
Simply put, the gamers allege – there’s a great Reddit thread – that Musk has paid other players to play PoE2 as Elon so he could look like a good gamer.
In gaming, it’s virtually an unforgivable sin for someone to essentially outsource the development of a character in order to then swoop in and claim glory when the hardest work was already done.
There’s no smoking gun, to be fair. But there’s precedent: in 2022, Musk shared a “power mage” character from Elden Ring, another fantasy RPG, but the build was immediately laughed at as the work of a complete novice.
Again, merely being able to build that type of character would require long gaming hours and knowledge of fundamentals of how the game works – naturally, Elden Ring fans were baffled.
Last year, Musk also claimed he was ranked among the top 20 players worldwide of the video game Diablo IV. It soon turned out it wasn’t true.
With the PoE 2 scandal – and rumours that Musk’s camp was paying someone in Asia to boost his numbers – the memes and the roasts are oh so glorious. Musk is now the laughing stock of the entire gaming community.
One comment on Reddit reads: “This sounds like a middle-schooler giving a book report on a book they’ve never read.”
Elon Musk, gaming god
undefined Dude Diligence (@0xDudeDiligence) January 11, 2025
streaming Path of Exile pic.twitter.com/dtjFgPoLu7
“It's insane to me that someone as rich and powerful as Elon Musk would essentially lie and pretend to be some pro-level gamer instead of just playing games for fun like a normal person,” one X user wrote.
Another summed it up pretty neatly: “A lifetime of taking credit for other people’s work has led to this.” No wonder Musk hasn’t spoken about gaming on X or anywhere else since the scandal broke.