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Elon Musk has had a lifelong addiction to video games, according to his biographer — but he is not a fan of “Grand Theft Auto.”
The tech billionaire wrote in a post on X that he won’t be buying GTA 6 when it releases in 2025 because he doesn’t “like doing crime,” and said that he was unable to finish 2013’s GTA 5 because he couldn’t bring himself to shoot virtual police officers.
It’s the latest installment in Musk’s long history with video games. One of the tech billionaire’s first inventions was a video game called Blastar, a Space Invaders-style side scroller that he made aged 12 and sold to a PC magazine company for $500.
You can actually still play Blastar online, and it’s not bad for a game made by a teenager in 1984. Since then, Musk’s fascination with video games has only grown — here are some of his favorites.
One game that Musk has been vocal in his admiration of is From Software’s immense fantasy RPG Elden Ring — so much so that he reportedly stayed up till 5:30am playing the game after deciding to buy Twitter last year.
According to Walter Isaacson’s biography, Musk decided to buy the social media site in April 2022 while staying in Vancouver with Grimes and their son, X Æ A-Xii.
Musk was apparently “in stress mode,” Grimes told Isaacson, and after texting the Twitter chairman Bret Taylor to say that he was planning to bid for the company, he hopped on his laptop and played Elden Ring till 5:30 in the morning.
The game, which was written by Game of Thrones author George RR Martin, is known for its massive world and extremely challenging boss fights. Isaacson notes that Musk spent much of his time in Caelid, a desolate, apocalyptic wasteland, after deciding to buy Twitter.
Musk is also an avid fan of Overwatch, a first-person shooter multiplayer game developed by World of Warcraft creator Blizzard.
Apparently, that extends to engaging in Overwatch-themed roleplay.
According to Isaacson, after Musk told his then-girlfriend Amber Heard that she looked like his favorite Overwatch character, Mercy, she spent two months designing a detailed replica costume so she could roleplay for him.
It didn’t do much to help save Musk and Heard’s relationship, however, with the couple breaking up in 2017, although they remained close.
Musk has long been fascinated by the world of Cyberpunk 2077, with the science fiction aesthetic serving as an inspiration for the futuristic design of Tesla’s Cybertruck.
His ex-girlfriend Grimes voiced a character in the game, which was released to a highly polarized reception in 2020, and according to Isaacson’s biography Musk crashed one of her recording sessions and demanded a cameo.
Musk apparently entered the studio carrying a 200 year-old gun and “insisted” the developers put him into the game, telling them he was “armed but not dangerous.”
It doesn’t look like Musk ever got that cameo, although some fans thought they spotted him playing a corporate lackey when the game came out.
However, the game’s depictions of human-machine hybrids and neural interfaces unsurprisingly struck a chord with the Tesla CEO, who has said that his brain implant startup Neuralink might one day pioneer similar technology.
Like several other tech CEOs including Deepmind’s Demis Hassabis, Musk is reportedly a big fan of the mobile strategy game “Battle of Polytopia.”
The game, which has been downloaded over 10 million times on the Google Play app store, sees players take on the role of tribal leaders battling each other for world domination.
Musk first encountered Polytopia in 2021 and quickly became obsessed, according to Isaacson, with the Tesla CEO even delaying business meetings to keep playing the game.
He also encouraged his brother Kimbal to play the game, telling him that it would make him a better CEO by helping him “remove empathy.”
Kimbal told Isaacson he eventually had to stop playing “because it was destroying my marriage,” and even Musk temporarily deleted Polytopia after he started to dream about it.
The strategy game has caused Musk headaches whilst he is awake as well.
In 2021, Tesla disabled a feature that allowed Model 3 drivers to play “The Battle of Polytopia” on their cars screens while they were driving after US regulators launched an investigation into the company.
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