As we've reported previously, despite holding executive roles in multiple major corporations and undertaking the busy work of burrowing himself in incoming political regimes, Elon Musk manages to find time to boast some impressive gaming laurels, claiming to hold high placements in Diablo 4 leaderboards and Path of Exile 2 hardcore league rankings. This week, those claims are being called into doubt, as PoE 2 streamers and subreddit sleuths analyze a recent stream in which Musk seemed to fumble over basic gameplay mechanics.
On January 7, Musk streamed an hour and a half of Path of Exile 2 gameplay on his current level 95 hardcore character. In PoE 2, surviving into higher levels in the hardcore league, regardless of ladder placement, is an impressive feat: As you progress, the game stacks layers of enemy modifiers, damage resistance reductions, and hazardous tileset modifiers, and dying once in hardcore means your character is toast. Getting a hardcore character into the 80s is impressive; getting one high enough into the 90s to place high on the hardcore ladder is a feat of skilled gameplay and buildcraft.
The gameplay on display in viewer-recorded VODs of the stream, however, is… well, not that.
Odd signs begin appearing as early as 18 minutes into the stream, when Musk enters his character's stash to reveal a tab that's been named "Elon's map." Considering the other tabs aren't labeled "Elon's currency" or "Elon's catalysts," the tab sticks out. Someone of a conspiratorial persuasion might see it as an indicator that, perhaps, another individual had curated the tab's selection of map-generating waystones for ease of gameplay—like if you wanted to be able to show off your high level character without a real risk of getting it killed.
But maybe it was just a fun little way for Musk to brighten up his own day. Who can say what affectations delight the hyper-wealthy?
Things spiral from there. Musk's clearspeed is halting. His movement, at times, seems random. At one point, his damage plummets as he goes a full 10 seconds without refilling his empty mana meter. Elsewhere, he leaves valuable currency items like Chaos Orbs and Exalted Orbs uncollected on the ground, but picks up low tier keystones that would be irrelevant at his character's level of progression.
At times, Musk clicks impotently at nodes on his Atlas map, seemingly struggling to identify which he can actually run despite having theoretically cleared the hundreds—if not thousands—of maps necessary for his character's level and gear. Later, when weighing which map to clear next, he selects a node with four modifiers. "There are four things here," he notes, which technically isn't untrue.
He enters maps with a full inventory, then repeatedly attempts to pick up items without inventory space. He doesn't have a loot filter active, but can be seen clicking and dragging items into his inventory—a maddening display that would imply he'd have manually sorted through thousands of dropped items to assemble his character's equipment, which could very well have taken longer than the actual gameplay necessary to reach his current level.
This is all, supposedly, from a player who at time of writing has been able to outpace all but 11 people on the global PoE 2 hardcore ladder. Still, it could've been performance anxiety. Even the wealthiest man alive can get a bit nervy when streaming for the peasantry, I guess.
What's most damning, however, is that Musk seems to show a fundamental misunderstanding of how itemization in Path of Exile 2 works. Late in the stream, he looks over his current equipment. Inspecting his weapon, he says it's "only level 62" compared to his level 95 character. In doing so, he's seemingly unaware that in PoE, an item's effectiveness isn't determined by its level requirement, but by its item level—a separate figure that determines which affixes the item can roll with.
He repeats the mistake as he mouses over each item he has equipped. "My equipment's pretty low level compared to my character level, but it seems to work pretty well," he says, even though it's all high-end gear that's been meticulously collected, crafted, and rerolled to maximize his character's build. It's a misapprehension that, frankly speaking, strains belief.
For players on the PoE 2 subreddit, the stream intensifies the doubt already surrounding Musk's ownership of his account. "His gear is better than a lot of full time streamers. No way it is real. Account sharing or boost of some kind," redditor InvestmentFew9366 said.
"I mean he has a f'in mirror tier staff and says he needs to replace it because it's only level 62," said redditor frenchpatato. "You don't need to say anything else."
"The wierd [sic] part to me is that he feels he needs to brag about being a pro gamer for some reason," Elbjornbjorn said. "Dude put a car his company designed into space on a rocket his other company designed, why the hell does he need to brag about gaming?"
