Elon Musk is not shy about his Diablo 4 skills (Blizzard Entertainment/Shutterstock)
Elon Musk has said he’s among the top 20 players of Diablo 4 in the world, but there are some caveats to his claims.
As the CEO of technology companies like SpaceX and Tesla, it’s perhaps not surprising that Elon Musk is a fan of video games, in particular Diablo 4.
Following the action role-player’s launch last year, Musk streamed himself playing the game on Twitter, and also claimed to be one of the top Quake players in the world, back in the late 90s – which later turned out not to be the case.
In the run up to the 2024 US presidential election, Musk has said he’s not only a fan of Diablo 4 but one of the best players in the world. Given his history with exaggerating his gaming abilities, is he telling the truth this time? Sort of, albeit with a lot of caveats.
How good is Elon Musk at Diablo 4?
As discussed on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Musk is listed as the 20th best player at Diablo 4’s Pit mode on a community-driven leaderboard.
He’s listed as clearing the Pit, which is a timed dungeon where players have to clear out monsters and a boss within 15 minutes, with a best time of 2 minutes and 45 seconds.
‘There’s only two Americans in the top 20, almost everyone is from Asia, otherwise,’ Musk said on the podcast. The other American is at the top, with a time of 1 minute and 59 seconds.
The Pit is already pretty difficult as an endgame dungeon, even if Diablo 4 overall is largely about optimising builds rather than skill itself, but clearing it out in such a short time is not an easy task.
While Musk might be a formidable Diablo 4 player, claiming he’s one of the best in the world is a stretch. The leaderboard itself, helltides.com, isn’t an official site run by Blizzard, and only records data from players who submit their runs.
At the time of writing, the site has 901 submissions in total, which is a tiny chunk of the overall player base (almost 17,000 people are playing the game right now on Steam alone, via SteamDB).
In an interview with The Verge, helltides.com co-owner, Fayz, described Musk’s claim as ‘valid’ but acknowledged the site’s shortcomings.
Elon Musk is among Diablo 4’s top players, sort of (Helltides)
‘It’s as comprehensive as it gets in terms of recorded Pit runs with video proof, since our community always alerts us when new top runs are recorded and posted on social media,’ Fayz said. ‘But, there’s no way for us to know about Pit runs that aren’t recorded and shared.’
To be fair to Musk, this is how most speedrunning leaderboards operate, so he’s probably a better Diablo 4 player than he is at Quake, at least.
In the past, Musk has been keen to show off his gaming credentials, between having a cameo in Cyberpunk 2077 and giving out tips for Elden Ring.
Diablo 4 recently launched its first expansion (Blizzard Entertainment)
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