• After much speculation Elon Musk admits he pays somebody to play Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 for him.
• The billionaire – who resides in the US – says this is necessary to compete with players on Asian servers.
• Many are now questioning what else Musk may be lying about on the back of this revelation.

Billionaire Elon Musk would have the world believe that he is an extraordinary gamer but in reality, he just pays people to play the game on his behalf.

While this has been a rumour for the last week, it was confirmed at the weekend when a creator calling himself Musk’s friend revealed an exchange with the billionaire in a video. Musk reportedly gave the creator permission to share the exchange though we can’t imagine why.

In the exchange, NikoWrex (the creator in question) asked Musk blatantly, “Have you level boosted (had someone else play your account) and/or purchased gear/resources for PoE2 and Diablo 4?”

In response the billionaire who owns several high-value entities said “It’s impossible to beat the players in Asia if you don’t, as they do!”. Musk went on to claim that the top players in Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 all have multiple people playing their accounts yet provides no proof of this.

We have a few questions on the back of that. For one, why is Musk, a man living in the United States, playing on an Asian server? The latency between the US and Asia sits between 200ms and 300ms and the choice to willingly deal with that lag is a bizarre one. Secondly, sharing account details with somebody else is a violation of Blizzard’s Terms of Service.

“You may not use your real name as the password for the Account, and you cannot share the Account or the Login Information with anyone, unless the terms of this Agreement allow it,” read the terms.

Essentially, Musk argues that it’s fine that he has people grinding on his behalf because other people do it as well. We’re not so sure about, especially when Musk provides no proof that the best players in the world – which he is competing against – also have others grinding on their behalf.

The exchange between NikoWrex and Musk paints the picture of a man that is deeply unserious and at the same time, desperate for attention. At one point he mentioned that he nearly won a Quake tournament and that Asmongold (a creator he beefed with before deleting those posts) declare he is “a living god of videogames” in order to stream a SpaceX launch.

Thing is, if you have to pay people to play a game on your behalf, you are less of a god and more of a cheater. The defence offered of “Well other people do it” is weak and as many have pointed out, is not reflective of the habits of those on the top of Path of Exile 2 or Diablo 4 leaderboards.

As many have pointed out, if Musk had just played the game from the start and grinded properly, that would have been endearing. Instead, the man is being dragged by the very sub-culture he so desperately wants to be a part of. It’s not clear why Musk has to be the best. Twitch is littered with average gamers who attract an audience with their personality. Oh wait, okay we get it now.

Perhaps Musk should have taken his own advice and posted his own material, rather than hiring people to play games for him. It’s clear that Musk wants this to blow over. Rather than speaking to Asmongold, Quin or even Kripparrian, he elected to speak with a creator who has less than 3 000 subscribers on YouTube and just over 3 000 followers on X. Unfortunately this isn’t blowing over and gamers have largely rejected Musk’s excuses going so far as to say that he might not even be the person playing on stream.

With Musk now admitting he lied about something as insignificant as playing a game, this is bound to lead to folks questioning what else the billionaire is lying about and we doubt statements from Grimes will put an end to that.