After widespread allegationsthat he was paying skilled gamers to level up his characters on popular videogames, multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk threw a massive tantrum last week.Now, in damning new evidence, netizens spotted Musk's extremely high-level character grinding in the free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) while the billionaire was on television attending Donald Trump's inauguration in person."How are you there?" New Zealand game streamer who goes by Quin69TV said during a stream. "How are you in the Sulphuric Caverns right now, Elon?""Bro, stop," he said. "Elon, you're in a map right now, level 96."Days after throwing a fit and leaking the messages of American streamer Zack "Asmongold" Hoyt, Musk finally admitted that he was cheating, telling a PoE 2 streamer who goes by the handle NikoWrex in since-published DMs that he had "level boosted," a term for when low-ranked players hire much more adept ones to artificially increase their rank in a game."But when I post a video of a game or am streaming," Musk said, as quoted by Windows Central, "that's 100 percent me."If that sounds like a weak excuse, you're not alone. It's a deeply embarrassing revelation for the richest man in the world. For a while now, Musk has attempted to make it appear as if he was a proficient and highly ranked video game player, beaming with pride while telling Joe Rogan that he was in the top 20 global Diablo 4 players worldwide last year.But that couldn't be further from the truth as evidenced by his surprisingly poor performance during his most recent PoE 2 stream and his latest admission, gamers are now wondering whether Musk has even rudimentary knowledge either game.While this all sounds like a low-stakes distraction, his ruse raises some inconvenient questions for Musk right as his political profile is ascendant. If the richest man in the world is willing to cheat and dissemble about something as trivial as gaming, what else is he lying about?"So Elon levels up his video game characters the same way he runs his companies," wroteone YouTube commenter. "Pay others to do the hard work and then take all the credit."During his brief chat with NikoWrex, Musk denied that he ever intended to take credit for the extremely high-level PoE 2 character he was seen controlling during a January 7 stream."The top accounts in Diablo or PoE require multiple people playing the account to win a leveling race," he rationalized.Of course, Musk refused to take any blame."What would I be apologizing for?" he said.For one, as PC Gamer points out, he could apologize for breaking the game's rules since account boosting goes against the terms of service for both Diablo 4 and PoE 2. But then again, when did pesky rules ever stop him before?The gaming community has since turned its back on him as he's become a laughingstock."Musk is living proof that someone can be rich and successful while still being a loser," one Reddit user wrote.Share This Article