Suspicions around Elon Musk’s touted gaming skills have sparked an angered response from the SpaceX CEO, and streamer Asmongold is in the firing line.
Beyond being the CEO of multiple companies and an advisor to president-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk really wants you to know he’s good at video games.
He has already claimed he used to be one of the best Quake players in the world (he wasn’t) and, last year, made similar, inaccurate proclamations about his skills in Diablo 4.
Earlier this month, Musk claimed, through his alternate account on X, to have a high placement on the Path Of Exile 2 hardcore league rankings. But this was also brought into question after he streamed himself playing the game and seemed unaware of basic gameplay mechanics.
Path Of Exile 2 streamers and Reddit users thoroughly dissected Musk’s gameplay for his fumbles, while highlighting oddities like a tab called ‘Elon’s Map’, which some have alleged could be named that way because other users are using his account.
Shortly after these suspicions emerged, Musk’s Path Of Exile 2 hardcore character (named Percy_Verence) died at level 97. In the action role-player, which is currently in easy access, hardcore characters work on a permadeath-style mechanic, where after your first death you are demoted to the Standard League from that point on.
As you might imagine, the time and skill required to climb up to level 97 in hardcore is very high, prompting further doubts that Musk got that far. Amongst the sceptics is Twitch streamer Zack Hoyt, aka Asmongold, who accused Musk of lying about his Path Of Exile 2 prowess.
‘There is no way he played that account,’ Asmongold said during a stream. ‘Like, I’m sorry. I think he bought the account, or somebody played it for him. A hundred-f***ing-percent.’
After the clip circulated on X, Musk responded with a series of posts on the platform, alleging that the streamer ‘is not his own man’ and ‘has to ask his boss for permission before he can do anything’.
This seems to have been Musk getting confused about the role of Asmongold’s video editors, who Musk mistook as having editorial control over Asmongold’s content.
Musk ‘leaked’ direct messages between him and Asmongold, where the latter explained how he has editors to help upload and edit videos on his YouTube channel (which is common among popular streamers).
‘I’m on hundreds of streams on YouTube/Twitch playing live with the world’s best players,’ Musk added. ‘No other way to say this, but, while Asmon IS good at caustic commentary and making fun of people, he is NOT good at video games.’
In response to this post – which was later updated through X’s Community Notes feature to add Asmongold’s achievements in World Of Warcraft – Asmongold wrote: ‘Leaking my DM’s is one thing but this is absolutely uncalled for.’
Asmongold also talked about Musk’s criticism during a stream, after the SpaceX CEO unfollowed him on X. ‘Was he probably not happy about the [Path Of Exile] video? He’ll get over it,’ he added.
‘Listen, it was so obvious. You cannot get mad at me for bringing this up. Everybody was talking about this. Come on, man.’
While Musk has picked fault with Asmongold specifically, he hasn’t addressed the wider doubts around his Path Of Exile 2 skills, with many other assuming that Musk either bought the account or paid someone else to play for him.
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