Tesla drops Steam gaming support inside its vehicles

Gaming. In the car. 😐

Yeah, you've never had to wait around for something in your car?
- Honestly, not long enough to be able to whip out a game. The closest is picking someone up at the airport, but I usually get there a few min after the flight lands.
  So yeah, it's not something I've really felt I needed. I've brought my Steam Deck with me a handful of times, but never actually used it.
- Don't you have phones?! You could play Diablo.
It’s honestly a smart idea, especially when waiting around at a charger while on a road trip or something.
- You should probably take a brief walk instead. Regular, actual brakes are important to reduce fatalities.
There already are games in the vehicle. They're just all pretty lightweight. The newer GPUs have a lot more power for the newer Autopilot and FSD processing.
They can only be used while parked, and help kill time when waiting for people or while charging if you are on a slower charger or have a longer charge time between segments.
- can only be used while parked.
  This clears things up. I imagined gaming occurring while driving which is a problem for obvious crazy and ethical reasons. Silly me.
  What throws me off now is the apparent waiting that occurs. I'm interested in EVs, but I didn't imagine the amount waiting. I presumed this was only for road trips. But... based on the comments I've seen... people just seem to spend a lot of time waiting in their cars for all sorts of reasons? The kind of waiting where gaming apparently makes sense? 🤷🏽‍♂️
Have you seen the dashboard on a Tesla? It's a big tablet and that's it. Many of the basic controls you might need easy access to are hidden behind touchscreen menus. They need to pump it with features to prevent people from thinking too much about it
You can play Need For Speed or Gran Turismo.
I mean, for passengers I think it could be cool, I doubt anyone sane would say use it while you yourself are driving.
- I think you might be over estimating the number of sane drivers.
While the car was in park. Never when the car was in drive, as it flat didn't work.
While you wait an hour for it to charge yeah

Was Steam getting to woke for musk, or did a contract negotiation fail?

It was just that he already used it for the hype and now it no longer gets any attention just requires people to maintain it.
This is a lot more boring than any of that. Just tech debt

I mean my expectations of Elon is so low I am like "good job for not doing the stupid thing Elon!" where I normally would be like "Duh ofcourse"

The absurdity of this headline makes "You wouldn't download a car" seem like a not-so-distant future PSA/ad campaign.

Yeah, with 3D printing, I can mostly download a 3D printer. If that tech gets good enough, I could conceivably download everything except the battery (FPGA for control logic).
I would totally love to download a car.

Drops as in adds, or as in removes?

Removed in new vehicles.
- Quote from the article
  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.

Anyway, who's dumb enough to buy a car that can spy on you ?

Good luck finding a new one that doesn't.
- That's why dumb cars are superior
Evey modern car can and does. Lawmakers currently sit on their hands regarding that.
- Lawmakers are currently enforcing it.

Good?

This just seems like a piss in the cherrios move. Like it wasn't hurting anyone?

Most likely they just don't want to continue having to support it at all going forwards.
Tech debt is a big issue with codebases as time goes on. Steam isn't necessary, and usage likely wasn't very high, so the time to maintain updating it was likely determined to not be worth it. So you end support where it's at with the currently deployed user base and let it die naturally.
- The host OS needs to do very little to maintain Steam compatibility. Most is done by Steam itself.

Even on cars that support it, it has always told you that you need to close Steam to put the car in drive. They don't let you play any games while the car is in motion.
It's been a decently good feature to have; the few times charging was a bit slow for me, it was nice to be able to play FFVI or Secret of Mana to pass the time. And it even synced my saves for when I got back home.
Sounds like you can only play while the car is in park, so it wasn't really a safety issue.