Tesla, the electric car manufacturer run by social media website vandal Elon Musk, has announced that it’s rolling back Steam support in its vehicles. Booting up a video game on the scale of Cyberpunk 2077 from the comfort of your parked car is the definition of bougie and unnecessary, but that was par for the course for the same company that touts self-driving cars whose autopilot mode has resulted in several crashes and deaths. That’s big tech priorities for you.
Steam was added as an app for Tesla cars in 2022, and if you own a car that was previously compatible with the PC video game launcher, you should remain unaffected. But according to Electrek, Tesla has informed new Model S and Model X owners that newer cars won’t be able to use Steam. The memo reads as follows:
“Tesla is updating the gaming computer in your Model X and your vehicle is no longer capable of playing Steam games. All other entertainment and app functionalities are unaffected.”
While saying “you can play video games in your car” is the kind of “we’re living in the future” nonsense big tech corporations want to tout when they’re trying to sell you something, I can’t get past that cars are death traps that do not need a million bells and whistles, when safety and ease of use are still so demonstrably short of where they should be.
Tesla’s Steam app doesn’t let you play games while the car is in motion, which was at least a bare minimum safety measure in this situation. But it also makes me wonder what was the imagined use case of this. I could see someone making the argument that maybe kids want to play games while their parents drive them somewhere, but if the app only works in park, it just seems like the most inconvenient way to play your games. If you can afford a Tesla, get yourself a Steam Deck.
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