New Teslas might lose Steam

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.