Elon Musk has often proclaimed his love for video games, particularly the ARPG genre. In recent years, he's often been seen streaming his favorite titles. But his latest live broadcast didn't quite go as planned: he was caught cold by a particularly hostile audience who took great pleasure in mocking his (many) missteps.
Originally, this stream, conducted from his private jet, was presented as a "continuity test" of his Starlink service. But many Internet users seized this opportunity to attack him vigorously, and not always in a very tactful manner. Shortly after the broadcast began, he began receiving a barrage of messages, each more aggressive than the last, on a variety of topics. On the menu: his personality, his tumultuous personal life, his relationship with drugs, Tesla's financial results, his involvement in Donald Trump's government...
Deaths galore
But it was above all his activity during this stream that was the subject of particularly virulent attacks. To test the stability of his Starlink connection, he chose to stream his games of Path of Exile 2, the hit ARPG from Grinding Gear Games. More specifically, he was playing it in hardcore mode, a game mode with extreme difficulty. Under these conditions, the death of a character is definitive: dozens, even hundreds of hours of progress can therefore go up in smoke with the slightest misstep. Hardcore mode is therefore reserved for the most talented and experienced players, those who know Path of Exile inside out and have a perfect grasp of all its technical and theoretical nuances.
But the least we can say is that Musk didn't impress his audience on this level. He made a string of blunders throughout the stream, leading to the loss of several characters due to easily avoidable errors: slow reactions, poor potion management, etc.
The highlight of the show came at the end of the stream, when his last freshly created character fell to the Bloated Miller. This is the prologue boss, a not-so-formidable enemy that most players manage to defeat on the first try without prior experience. Undoubtedly frustrated, he promptly blamed the internet connection before ending the stream.
Elon Musk, the "god gamer," the myth crumbles
These misadventures sparked a mountain of merciless mockery, both in the chat and on social networks. And for good reason: he often presented himself as a very high-level player in ARPGs like Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2. In various popular podcasts, such as those of Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan, he boasted of his performance, claiming to be able to massacre the most difficult content with disconcerting ease.
Many players were skeptical of these claims, however. Indeed, titles of this genre generally require hundreds of hours of intensive grinding to earn a place among the elite—a prerequisite that seemed difficult to reconcile with the very busy schedule of the CEO of several enormous companies.
These doubts were later confirmed, when some of his characters were caught online at times when the tycoon was in the middle of public appearances. Musk was forced to admit that he had in fact cheated by using boosting services—a practice that consists of paying experienced players to level up your character without having to lift a finger.
In this context, observers did not hesitate to mock his poor live performances. If he hoped to repair his reputation as an elite player, the opposite happened during this stream. "It's like someone pretending to be an F1 driver while being overtaken by high school students on a go-kart track," one Reddit user joked.
It remains to be seen whether this outright humiliation will put an end to his career as a "god gamer," or whether he will decide to try it again in the future, between two budget cuts and media antics.
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