Have you played Steam in your Tesla lately?

Tesla might be dropping Steam support on some new deliveries of Model X, according to a message from the company shared by a Reddit user who is expecting to take delivery of the long-range version of the electric SUV.

Tesla’s message alerts the customer that the company is “updating the gaming computer” in the Model X and says it’s “no longer capable of playing Steam games.” The message ends with a button for the customer to confirm they will proceed with the delivery.

There’s no indication that other Tesla models will be affected. And we’re not seeing any signs that the automaker plans to remove Steam from current owners’ vehicles through a software update. However, Tesla’s already seems to be leaning toward dropping Steam support for some other models.

Steam isn’t available in the Cybertruck, for example, and Tesla hasn’t said whether it plans on bringing the gaming platform to its bestselling Model Y and Model 3 vehicles, despite newer models sporting improved AMD Ryzen processors. The company has already removed some games over the years, including Sonic the Hedgehog.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk had hyped Steam as a selling point, advertising the new GPU as powerful with the ability to play top-tier games like Cyberpunk 2077. Steam launched in a revised 2022 version of the redesigned Model S and Model X. Initial 2021 models were not installed with sufficient RAM to support the advertised games, so Steam was not included. Musk has said a retrofit would be available, but it’s not free.

There’s speculation that Tesla might be backtracking on powerful gaming hardware in new Model S and X vehicles. Musk has been busy squeezing the company through hot-headed layoffs in an effort to make the company “absolutely hard core.” Tesla scaled back on what a new low-cost vehicle will look like and is going all in on building a robotaxi, which means games like The Witcher are no longer a priority.

    • nillocEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      Killing time while recharging the batteries was the original pitch for all the entertainment in Teslas.

      There’s going to be a big jailbreak market opening up for these things when they’re out of warranty. Cancelling free charging plans which helped keep people on their data networks will also drive hacking. If the cars last that long.

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        5·
        6 months ago

        steam powered submarines

        I didn’t even know there there was such a thing.

        Of the 18 built, none were lost through enemy action, but six sank, with significant loss of life, in accidents.

        […]

        With a dive time of around 5 minutes (with the record being 3 minutes 25 seconds which was claimed by K8) it allowed the captain the luxury of being able to walk around the superstructure to ensure that the funnels were securely folded. The last, improved, boat, K26 was completed slowly, being commissioned in 1923. She had six 21-inch (530 mm) bow torpedo tubes but retained the 18-inch beam tubes. Her higher casing almost cured the problems of seawater entering the boiler room, and improved ballast tank arrangements cut the diving time to 3 minutes 12 seconds to get to 80 feet (24 m). She also had an increased maximum diving depth of 250 feet (76 m).

        • HexBroke [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          7·
          6 months ago

          This was made worse by the estimated maximum diving depth of 200 feet (61 m) being much less than their overall length.

          Even a 10-degree angle on the 339-foot-long hull would cause a 59-foot (18 m) difference in depth of the bow and stern, and 30 degrees would produce 170 feet (52 m), which meant that while the stern would almost be on the surface, the bow would almost be at its maximum safe depth.

        • Tom742 [they/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          7·
          6 months ago

          Most modern submarines have steam powered propulsion and electricity generation. The nuclear reactor just acts like a rock heating up the water to make steam.

    • POKEMONGOTOTHEGULAG [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      6·
      6 months ago

      Teslas needs high-end GPUs for their pseudo-Autopilot because Elon Musk thinks high processing power and AI with access to the car’s cameras are all that it need to self-drive. All other self-driving competitors have taken the route of lidar.

      As there is a highly capable Gpu in every Tesla and they are basically gaming GPUs with custom drivers, it makes sense to add gaming support as a stupid gimmick.

  • D61 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    6 months ago

    Some day, in the next 10 years or so, Tesla vehicles are going to be like all the old cellphones and smart phones that are hiding in various drawers in houses all across the world.

    A battery that cannot hold a charge, an OS that is so far out of date and unsupported that no up to date software can be installed on it, a processor that is missing some critical component that is now a basic requirement for using an up to date web browser.

    But the charging cable still works and it will still power on so it will just sit in the garage with an NES emulator, SNES emulator, GBA emulator and the full library of games just like my Kindle Fire, my first Andriod Phone, and at some point in the future this ancient iPhone that is still limping along.