Elon Musk's Boosting Allegations Explained: Path of Exile 2, Diablo 4
The internet hasn’t lost interest in Elon Musk’s video game escapades, though that attention may have cost him this time as the billionaire is being accused of boosting his various accounts on games like Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2.
On Jan. 7, Musk streamed himself playing Path of Exile 2 and running high-level endgame content. That footage has since been torn apart by the game’s community, igniting conversations about how Musk appears to be paying players to boost his accounts so he can play the role of epic gamer for his millions of followers without putting in the work.
Elon Musk Path of Exile 2 and Diablo Boosting, Explained
With this most recent controversy, Elon Musk streamed himself playing a high-level Path of Exile 2 character while running endgame content on hardcore difficulty. While playing the game, he showed several things and performed in a way that had experienced players from the community pointing out some inconsistencies—and it doesn’t start with PoE.
When Elden Ring took over the gaming world in 2022, Musk became a meme within that community for using a build that players criticized for having no focus and basic mistakes that contradicted some of his claims about its performance.
Even before that, he had been active on social media discussing his love for games like Fallout and Overwatch, talking about how much time he spent playing them. He even went viral in early November 2024 for appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast and talking about gaming and how much he games while also claiming to be one of the best Diablo 4 players in the world.
After that podcast appearance, Elon Musk posted a clip of what he claims was him clearing the Tier 150 Artificer’s Pit in record time, which would have given him bragging rights as one of the top Diablo 4 players in the world, even if he was using the same broken build as everyone else in that patch.
Only one other player has achieved a sub-two-minute run, and Musk’s attempt would have cleared Resistance’s one-minute and fifty-nine-second run by around five seconds. However, that time has not been accepted by the Helltides leaderboard, leaving Musk’s run as unofficial and his current documented ranking at 54th on the global board at two minutes and forty-five seconds.
Helltides simply never added the time to the leaderboards after it was reviewed, meaning the team running the independent site likely thought something was up or did not get the additional information they needed to verify the integrity of the run.
Now we skip ahead to his PoE2 stream on X, where Musk is blowing three high-level areas and showing off his loot, only to then have all of it dissected by people who actually play the game.
At the time of that Jan. 7 stream, Musk’s character, Percy_Verence, was ranked in the top 15 hardcore accounts on the official Path of Exile 2 website’s leaderboards, meaning he would have been playing the game for hundreds of hours since it launched in early access on Dec. 6 to reach that point with just a single character, though he has multiple.
From having a map labeled “Elon’s Map” to repeatedly failing to use said map despite being such a “high-level player,” it was clear to experienced players he had not spent much time with the game. It became even more obvious when he failed to perform basic loot management before entering new maps and running right past rare item drops like Chaos Orbs during his runs—and that is just a base observation from watching the stream.
Is Elon Musk Boosting His Gaming Accounts?
We will likely never know for certain whether he pays or has other agreements with skilled players in certain games to grind up accounts or characters for him. But, based on the gameplay we have seen from Elon Musk in certain games he boasts of being a top player in, many gamers are ready to believe the claims made against his status.
“A ton of people are calling [Musk being a top Diablo 4 player] into question now after watching the Path of Exile stream because those are transferable skills,” MoistCr1TiKaL said in his own breakdown of the claims. “If you are really good at Diablo you should at least be pretty good at Path of Exile, and he’s just not. He lacks the basic understanding of ARPG fundamentals. So how the fuck can he be one of the top Diablo players and be this clueless for Path of Exile? It just doesn’t make sense.”
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Every top player who has commented on Musk’s Path of Exile stream has pointed out inconsistencies with top player behavior, settings, and basic approaches to things like mapping and loot. All of it adds up to the Tesla CEO having someone else play the game for him so he can show off a shiny, high-leveled account and claim to be an amazing gamer in front of his followers and people who don’t know any better.
As Quin69TV pointed out in his video, Musk at one point refers to one of the best weapons in the entire hardcore game as of now that you can’t even buy, the Agony Pole, as just a level 62 staff without taking into account what bonuses it actually gives him. The entire section of him breaking down his inventory highlights just how little he understands anything about Path of Exile 2.
Even controversial Twitch streamer Asmongold called Musk out, going as far as to say he would stream all of his content on X for an entire year straight if the billionaire could prove he was actually the one leveling up those accounts from the start. Musk has yet to respond to any backlash from this incident.