Elon Musk is the world’s richest man with over $200 billion in net worth right now. He could go anywhere and do anything and he has apparently chosen to spend an inordinate number of hours grinding for loot in Diablo IV. The Tesla CEO revealed on the Joe Rogan podcast in a surprise, last-minute appearance before the election that he is a top-20 player in Blizzard’s hit action-RPG.
“There’s only two Americans in the top 20,” he told Rogan in an episode that dropped on Monday. “The rest, almost everyone is from Asia otherwise.” It sounds like hyperbole, but the leaderboard for the game does reveal Musk is number 20 when it comes to quickest run times for the hardest version of an end game dungeon activity called The Pit.
He had a time of 2:45, which, according to his gaming alt account on X (formerly known as Twitter), was set just a few days ago. The account shows he’s been grinding Pit runs for weeks, though his obsession with Diablo IV was well documented prior to that. Activision even tried to rope him into the game’s marketing at one point.
Even if it’s Musk’s account, not everyone believes that he did all the work to set the record himself. How does a CEO of multiple companies who is always posting on social media and currently campaigning on behalf of convicted felon Donald Trump for president find the time? Did he hire someone to farm loot on the account for him or buy gear off the black market? Or maybe smooth brain vibing in Diablo IV really is the aggrieved tech billionaire’s happy place.
During his interview with Rogan, Musk said he believes that gaming is unfairly maligned as waste of time. Instead, he argued that it can be calming and restorative by forcing people to focus exclusively on solving tough problems or overcoming complex challenges.
“If I’m trying to sort of get an extremely good clear time in Diablo or something like that, or a first-person shooter, whatever the case may be, I can tell that I’m tired or my brain’s not working as well as it should,” he said. “It’s like a mental calibration. You can tell immediately, how good is your mental state?”
Musk and Rogan also discussed whether surgeons should have to show how good they are at video games as part of their medical training. The discussion came days after Musk failed to show up in court over a lawsuit alleging that he was running an illegal lottery in Pennsylvania to help register people to vote for Trump. Maybe he was busy grinding Diablo IV. The judge ultimately still ruled in his favor.
Update 11/5/2024 4:52 p.m. ET: Doom programmer and Oculus co-founder John Carmack posted that Musk’s Diablo records are 100 percent legit.
“I have seen some people express skepticism about your high level Quake play back in the day, but after watching you run Diablo now, I’m sure you were a force to be reckoned with!” he tweeted.