WWE's Randy Orton reportedly paid a gamer at least $1,000 to level up his Elden Ring character, which explains how he reached level 527 so quickly last year.
You probably don't need to be told this, but Elden Ring was a pretty big deal last year. Not only did it win Game of the Year at The Game Awards (before a stage invader infamously ruined the moment for clout), but the game even reached several celebrities, such as Cole Sprouse and The Mandalorian's Ming-Na Wen.
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Another celebrity that seemed to get bit by the Elden Ring bug was WWE star Randy Orton, who somehow managed to get to level 527 during the game's peak last year. That seemed a little weird when we reported it last year but, one year later, we've finally figured out part of how he managed such a big feat - by paying for it.
As reported by Kotaku, a recent livestream from The Insiderz, a Twitch channel hosted by WWE tag team duo Brennan Williams (aka ma.çé) and Mansoor Al-Shehail, has revealed the truth of Orton's accomplishment. According to the pair, Orton previously said to them that he found the game "[****ing hard" and decided to pay someone to give him enough runes to level up to level 100 and give him a big headstart on the game.
According to Al-Shehail, Orton said, “Yeah, it’s [****ing] hard. I paid a guy $1,000 bucks to give me infinite runes so I could level up to 100 right away". Williams then added that Orton also said, “I love that game though. It’s awesome. But no, I couldn’t deal with that bullshit, so I just paid a guy to give me a bunch of runes.”
It's worth noting that, although Orton has admitted to paying for the boost up to level 100 at the start of the game, it's not clear if he continued to use his "infinite runes" to continue levelling up, or if he then played the game more legitimately and got to that level himself. Orton's claim that he had reached level 527 was made on April 26, two months after Elden Ring launched, which seems like more than enough time to get to that level after being given a bit of a boost to get past some of the game's harder bits.
That being said, if Orton had "infinite runes", it's pretty much impossible to tell how much of his levelling he did himself. Really though, beyond being an interesting story, it doesn't really matter how The Viper managed to get so powerful in Elden Ring - as long as he had fun doing it, that's what counts.