Tesla rolls out Steam game support for newest vehicle models

Over 6,000 "Deck Verified" games are now playable on the 17-inch central console.

The newest models of Tesla's electric vehicles are now Steam-powered. And by that, of course, we mean the vehicles' central consoles can now access and play thousands of titles from Valve's popular Steam gaming platform.

The new addition, part of Tesla's 2022.44.25.1 "holiday update," is currently only available on the high-end "new" Model S and X vehicles Tesla released in 2022, each of which includes 16GB of onboard RAM (though CEO and founder Elon Musk promised in a tweet that a "retrofit" will be available for older models). The release notes for the update suggest that those vehicles should be able to run any game that has been Verified by Valve for play on the company's Steam Deck handheld.

The list of Verified games currently includes over 6,000 titles that run on the Deck through SteamOS, most using a compatibility layer to get Windows-coded games running on the Arch Linux-based system. We imagine the even more expansive list of games listed as "Playable" on Steam Deck will also work in these Teslas, though users may run into some specific interface headaches with such titles.

Deck-verified games currently target a steady 30 fps minimum on the Steam Deck's 7-inch, 1280×800-resolution screen. The 2022 Teslas' 17-inch central console, on the other hand, can support up to a 2200×1300 resolution. Thus, individual game settings may need to be tweaked a bit to get the most out of the "10 teraflops of compute power" AMD boasts for Tesla's Ryzen APUs.

Tesla's new Steam integration supports wireless Bluetooth controllers and even mouse/keyboard setups, Musk tweeted Tuesday night. Users can also download their cloud saves to the car to pick up games played on other devices.

The journey to a gaming car

Full-fledged Steam support in Teslas is the biggest step in a long journey that started when Musk put out a call to game developers for Tesla-based ports back in 2018. Since then, Tesla's center console display has added support for a few dozen individually ported games, starting with Cuphead in 2019 and running through high-end titles like The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077 (the latter of which was used to show off Steam support in a promotional tweet).

Back in February, though, Musk indicated a change in Tesla's game porting strategy, saying the company was "working through the general case of making Steam games work on a Tesla vs specific titles." Musk said in July that the company was "making progress with Steam integration," leading to Tuesday's Steam support update on late-model Teslas.

Last year, a Tesla update added a controversial feature that let supported games run even while the car was in motion. That move sparked a wide-ranging investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which caused Tesla to backtrack and once again limit gameplay to when the vehicle is parked.

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