Tesla putting Steam games in its cars

The electric car company headed up by controversial CEO Elon Musk says that its 2022 vehicles will now be able to play games from Steam

Tesla has announced that its new software update will bring the Steam store to its 2022 vehicles, alongside thousands of games.

The new update, version 2022.44.25.1, is a lot more interesting than its name suggests. As detailed in a post on “not a tesla app”, a Tesla fan website, the update will allow Tesla users driving 2022 model Model S and Model X vehicles to access the Steam storefront directly from the Tesla’s touchscreen.

The post says that any game that is verified for play on Steam operator Valve’s handheld device, the Steam Deck, will work in Teslas too. That means that over 5000 games will be playable in the cars, less than 10% of all games on Steam, but still an incredibly sizeable amount.

The Steam app on Tesla is listed as a beta, meaning some aspects of it might be incomplete or not work correctly, but it is reportedly working reasonably well right now, with full support for features like cloud synchronisation of save files and support for both wireless controllers and keyboard and mouse controls functional in its current state.

Recently, indie developers said that Tesla wanted their games in cars for free. After the controversial Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased Twitter and revealed plans for paid verification, a number of independent developers took to Twitter to share stories of their talks with Tesla.

According to Immortality developer Sam Barlow and Untitled Goose Game contributor Cabel Sasser, Tesla had approached the indie developers about having their games in Tesla vehicles, as part of its Tesla Arcade platform. They said that Tesla would not pay them anything to port the games to the platform, instead suggesting that the “exposure” for putting their games on the platform would be worth the time, effort, and expense.

Tesla vehicles will be able to play any game that is verified for use on a Steam Deck. Picture: Tesla

Both reportedly turned Tesla’s “silly” idea down, but it looks like Tesla may have gotten the last laugh. Both Immortality and Untitled Goose Game are Steam Deck verified, meaning they’ll be playable in Teslas as part of the new update.

According to Musk, Cyberpunk 2077 is also playable and “works great”. The game has had a bit of a renaissance following its rocky launch, and at The Game Awards last week it was revealed that Idris Elba would be starring in new Cyberpunk DLC.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.