Elon Musk just got ratioed by the Assassin’s Creed X account

Ubisoft’s official X account for the Assassin’s Creed series popped off Tuesday afternoon as the massive franchise responded to offhand criticism from Elon Musk. The reply was a roast for the ages.

The interaction happened when Musk responded to a tweet from Mark Kern (@Grummz), a former Blizzard developer who is now more widely known for his support of Gamergate. Kern posted a screenshot of a recent ad post from political commentator and streamer Hasan Piker. The post, which is tagged as an ad, shows an image of Piker dressed up like a ninja and holding a katana photoshopped onto the cover of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which was released March 20 by Ubisoft. “PLAYING @assassinscreed SHADOWS ONCE MORE!! GET IN NOW FOR GAMING!!!” the post reads.

Grummz posted the screenshot, taken from a Bluesky account that automatically reposts Piker’s tweets, with his commentary: “You can tell a lot about Ubisoft @Ubisoft with how much money they are throwing at terrorist-platforming streamers.” Musk responded twice: first, “Hasan is a fraud,” then, “‘Sell-out’ would be more accurate. Objectively, he is promoting a terrible game just for the money.”

Cue the legendary response from the official Assassin’s Creed account: “Is that what the guy playing your Path of Exile 2 account told you?”

The account is referencing the widespread belief that Musk’s ostensibly excellent performance in several video games is due to him paying skilled gamers to boost his account while he works on dismantling the U.S. government in the background. This became a rumor after Musk claimed he has one of the most powerful Path of Exile 2 characters in the world, then streamed himself playing like a noob despite having god-tier gear that takes hundreds of hours, or superb gameplay, to acquire. Later, YouTuber NikoWrex posted a video that seemingly shows his DMs on X with Elon Musk. The video shows messages from Musk’s account that say the best players in Diablo and Path of Exile games “require multiple people playing the account to win a leveling race.” When NikoWrex asked whether he’s level-boosted in Path of Exile 2 or Diablo 4, the Musk account responded with a “100” emoji.

Clearly, the Assassin’s Creed team is not hiding in the shadows like the game’s characters. Kern responded to the fiery takedown — which got about 20 times the number of likes as Musk’s most-liked reply — with a screenshot of a PCGamesN story reporting on Shadows’ sales numbers. (Kern made sure to omit the outlet’s name in his screenshot — another practice Musk has been bodied for on social media.) “Our game is out,” the Assassin’s Creed X account responded, undoubtedly poking fun at Kern for his in-progress, unreleased game for which he launched a crowdfunding campaign eight years ago.

The PCGamesN story Kern screenshotted quotes an analyst, Rhys Elliott, who said the early sales numbers “do NOT reflect the smash hit Ubisoft really needs” and posited that the game hasn’t broken even yet. In contrast, Video Games Chronicle reported Monday that the game represents the second-biggest launch in the series and Ubisoft’s best-ever day-one launch on the PlayStation Store, and it garnered a significant amount of PC downloads. The game also got widespread critical acclaim from English-language outlets as well as gaming outlets based in Japan, despite early concerns about the game’s cultural and historical accuracy. That’s not to mention the handful of X users claiming that Ubisoft’s recent social media strategy has tipped them toward buying the game.

The narrative that Shadows isn’t doing well is one that’s been hard-fought by keyboard warriors who first criticized the game’s inclusion of the Black samurai Yasuke. In truth, Ubisoft’s inclusion of Yasuke is either boosting the game up, or not making a difference. The game is getting played a lot, and maybe it’ll get played even more now that Ubi has one-shotted Musk on his own social media platform.