In a move that does little to actually bolster the credibility of his claim, Elon Musk has responded to Twitch streamer Asmongold’s recent call out of his supposed Path Of Exile 2 mastery not with proof of his actual in-game skills, but with insults – verifiably false ones at that – against his challenger’s character.
As previously reported, Musk’s competency with Grinding Gear Games’ upcoming sequel was first called into question on January 7th when, during a livestream of his gameplay hosted on Twitter/X, veteran players noticed several discrepancies between his complete misunderstanding of the game’s mechanics and his account’s position as one of the highest ranking in the entire world.
Per a recap of the situation provided by streamer QuinTV (which itself notably helped bring the situation to wider attention), “Elon Musk’s character is currently level 97, AKA rank 12 on Hardcore, that’s permanent Death Mode, trade league [the in-game term for the seasonal league that allows for co-op play]. Two weeks into the league, when people are playing the game, literally, they’re staying up 40 to 50 hours without sleeping, only playing Path of Exile, and they are the most try hard guys in the world, and the highest ranked player on the hardcore trade league was level 93.”
“And you’re thinking to yourself, ‘That’s kind of close 97,'” said the streamer. “Every time level you up, it becomes exponentially harder to gain experience. A lot harder, and a lot harder, okay? So these players, to get to 97, have to be playing the game every day, for the majority of their day.”
“Currently, what is their highest ranked player?” he next asked, proceeding to pull up the profile for the respective player, Naxan#8017. “They’re level 97, the same as Elon Musk [a text clarification added to the video itself corrects the record by noting that, as of the video’s editing, said player was now level 98]. So, I mean, I figure he’s effectively been just doing nothing except playing Path of Exile.”
Further discussing such oddities as Musk’s apparent ignorance of Path of Exile 2‘s end game and his complete dismissal of extremely rare items for nonsensical reasons, QuinTV ultimately declared, “And if you need any more proof that Elon is 100% boosted, he was playing the game today, inside of maps blasting, while simultaneously on an X space talking to like, some far-right wing part of some German government.”
“I don’t know, some political bulls–t,” he concluded. “I guess he’s just that much of a God Gamer.”
And it was this particular video that eventually caught the attention of the aforementioned Zack ‘Asmongold’ Hoyt, who after watching it with his followers during a livestream asserted, “So the question is, did Elon Musk play this account to level 97? The answer is very simple: No.”
To this end, the popular streamer then issued a direct, public challenge to the SpaceX CEO, stating, “Unequivocally, without a doubt, if Elon Musk can prove that he played this account to 97, I will stream on X starting the day that he proves it for an entire year straight. Every single stream that I do. I will. Well, a multistream, also stream on Twitch too, right?”
After issuing this challenge, Asmongold further questioned, “I don’t know why Elon Musk did this. Well, I do know why, it’s an ego thing, right? But I don’t think that it’s the right decision to make, and I think it was stupid for him to have done this. The fact is that people respect authenticity more than they respect success. I don’t think there’s anybody that really gives that much of a s–t about being really good at video games.”
“I think that we deserve, if he wants an apology, if you really played the game, play through the campaign again,” he added. “Play through the campaign again, explain the systems in the game, and do it live, and you’ve gotta have a face cam. You gotta do it. You did it before with Diablo [IV]. Diablo is not so hard, right? But yeah, stream it. You gotta stream the whole thing. And not on X. And tell me ahead of time so I can react to it.”
“I feel like it’s a universal negative for him to do this and it just makes him look like an insecure asshole by doing it,” Asmongold concluded. “And it makes him look worse entirely, and I think that also him misjudging the complexity of the game and thinking that he could get away with and have people not notice indicates just a level of bad decision making,” he said. “I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk, I really like Elon Musk a lot, but this is embarrassing and very silly. It is, and it makes him look bad and it’s for absolutely no reason.”
And though Musk would eventually respond to Asmongold and his challenge, he would not do so directly nor in any way that actually addressed any of the criticisms, but rather by hurling insults and attempting to undermine the streamer’s credibility.
On January 15th, Diablo IV-centric Twitch streamer ScreamHeart took to social media to share a video detailing his “unique perspective to the Elon Musk drama” – itself boiling down to a series of conversations they had together on a previous Diablo IV stream surrounding Musk’s verifiable Quake II career, which ScreamHeart argued was proof that Musk was ‘a f–king nerd’ and thus definitely not faking his place on the Path of Exile 2 leaderboards.
Despite having nothing to do with Path of Exile 2 itself and pointing to functionally and mechanically different games in support of his claims, ScreamHeart’s video eventually drew a response from Musk, who chose to use the opportunity to go full-on ‘personal attack mode’ against Asmongold.
“Asmon behaves like a maverick ‘independent’, but in reality has to ask his boss for permission before he can do anything,” he began. “He is not his own man.”
However, Musk would soon reveal that his claim was based not on any factual evidence, but rather his own ignorance – willful or otherwise.
Attempting to back up his ‘gotcha’, Musk would share private DMs exchanged between him and Asmongold regarding the latter’s employing of editors to best optimize his Twitch content for YouTube, therein pointing to the streamer’s explanation that said editors “basically run the entire YouTube account, so basically any content I post is edited or uploaded by them and they just get a cut of the ad rev, it’s a super good system tbh almost everyone on YT does it” as proof of his ‘being controlled’.
From there, Musk would try to back-up his Path of Exile 2 claims by sharing a recording of his and Twitch streamer @aceofspadeshots world record-breaking speed run on Diablo IV‘s Abbatoir of Zir dungeon – again, a completely different game.
Yet, despite this continued dodging, this video share would draw a response from professional ‘Musk reply guy and yes man’ Ian Miles Cheong, who shamelessly fluffed his idol, “You shouldn’t have to justify yourself to these people but it’s nitce that you’ve got receipts to prove your gaming credentials”.
In turn, Musk would decry, “I’m on hundreds of streams on YouTube/Twitch playing live with the world’s best players. 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.”
Catching wind of Musk’s crash out, Asmongold would ultimately retweet his final insult and declare, “Leaking my DM’s is one thing but this is absolutely uncalled for.”