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According to one of Elon Musk’s gamer friends, the controversy surrounding Musk’s use of augmented characters in Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2 it’s a big misunderstanding. In a DM exchange on X, Musk told streamer NikoWrex that he did, indeed, pay people to play video games for him. According to Musk, everyone at the highest level does so so it’s fine.
At the same time he was getting ready to sit at President Donald Trump’s right hand, the world’s richest man was hitting it off with people online over video games. At the beginning of the year, Musk did a livestream of his Path of Exile 2 character on X. It was weird.
According to high-level players with a lot of knowledge of the game, Musk he didn’t seem to know what he was doing. And his account had telltale signs of a guy who had paid to have someone else level him. Gamers called it out and Musk began to publicly fight the allegations. At some point Grimes, the mother of three of his children, also took X to defend the honor of Musk’s game.
Two days ago, NikoWrex posted a YouTube video that he said cleared everything up. Musk would not answer the questions The Wall Street Journal about his gaming habits, but he was apparently responding to a DM from a gaming friend on X. With Musk’s permission, NikoWrex posted the transcript of a conversation he had with the billionaire on X where he asked about the controversy.
“Have you leveled up (have you had anyone play on your accounts) and/or purchased gear/resources for PoE 2 and Diablo 4?” NikoWrex asked.
Musk responded with a “100 percent” emoji. “But when I post a video of a game or I’m streaming, that’s 100% me,” Musk clarified. “It is impossible to beat the players in Asia if you do not, like them!”
Musk styles himself as a master gamer, it’s a big part of his personality and personal brand. The use of enhanced characters in games such as Diablo and PoE 2 it is not unheard of, but it is controversial. Getting a character to the maximum level can be a grueling task that takes hundreds of hours and gamers have long questioned how it was that Musk was able to get characters so high while hanging out with Trump and running several companies.
NikoWrex asked if Musk intended to take credit for leveling a character at max. “No,” Musk said. “He never stated. The main accounts in Diablo or PoE require many people playing the account to win the level race.”
Musk admits the central claim of the criticism of the gaming community against him: he did not level the accounts himself. It’s strange. He could, if he wanted to, diffuse a lot of the drama just by stating this clearly in advance. In contrast, he chose meat with prominent game streamers like Asmongold when they call him.
NikoWrex asked about the fight with Asmongold. Musk unfollowed the streamer on X, pulled his blue check, and leaked his DMs without his permission. It seemed to imply that Asmongold was not his person because he worked with publishers.
“Asmongold seemed to need permission from others to broadcast in X, suggesting that he does not control his own destiny,” Musk told NikoWrex. Musk then promoted many of his achievements in diablo 4, also check the names of whoever Grimes said she witnessed firsthand.
At the end of the conversation, Musk said he would consider allowing Asmongold to relay a SpaceX launch. “But I have to admit that I am a living god of video games. 🤣🤣.”
A few days after this conversation, the self-proclaimed “living god of video games” appeared Sieg Heil during Trump’s inauguration celebration. Twice. As she bit her lip.
