Tesla drops Steam gaming support inside its vehicles

Tesla is telling new Model S and Model X buyers that they won’t have access to Steam gaming inside their electric vehicles.

Even though Tesla has been investing heavily into integrating video games into its in-car entertainment system, it still surprised many when Tesla said earlier this year that it planned to go as far as integrating Valve’s Steam, an online video game store and distribution platform, in its vehicles.

Steam has such a large library of games, including high performance games that haven’t been integrated into Tesla vehicles before.

In late 2022, Tesla officially launched its Steam Beta native app in new Model S and Model X vehicles.

However, we now learn that Tesla is dropping the feature. The automaker wrote to people taking delivery of new Model S and Model X vehicles:

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.

It doesn’t sound like current owners are affected by the change.

Tesla has been known to drop existing apps in new vehicles while keeping them in vehicles already delivered, like the Disney Plus app.

Electrek’s Take

I’m not so surprised. While it was an interesting idea, I’ve always maintained that if you want to game inside your Tesla, you’re better off with a mobile gaming device, whether it be a gaming laptop or Steam Deck or something like that.

Some games are enjoyable inside the Tesla, but it is a limited gaming rig. Maybe it is because it is a car.

I assume that Tesla saw that very few people were using Steam inside its vehicles and dropped it.