Running Steam with USB or SSD installed can cause software crash WHILE DRIVING!

[osarda]

I am surprised this isn’t being discussed by all the major EV news oulets, as it’s a huge liability and making my Model S Plaid inoperable at times. Nutshell: If you installed Steam to play games after the December update and you’re using a USB stick or SSD in the glovebox…there is a known issue of this causing a memory leak that will crash the software in the vehicle while driving. Essentially your car will not be able to move forward or in reverse, and all of the displays freeze and become inoperable before crashing and rebooting. This happened to me when pulling out of my driveway and left my car frozen in the middle of the road with oncoming traffic with no way of being able to move. I had to wait several minutes for the vehicle to notice it was frozen, and then reboot itself. I have confirmed with my local Tesla service center that is in fact what is occurring and is known issue.

The Details: per the internets suggestion, I installed a Samsung T7 SSD in the glovebox to install steam games. Followed the vehicle prompts to format the drive and all seemed well. After a few days, the issue above occured and the vehicle froze mid drive. My service tech called after checking the event log in the vehicle and said and I quote “I did a little more digging and it turnst out steam was using 8GB of memory at the time of the issue. Please remove the SSD as this is causing issues, and install a 256GB Samsung USB drive of the same model as the 64GB USB stick that comes in the glovebox from the factory. My Model S Plaid only has a 16GB driver which is shocking considering steam games can get over 50GB.

So I ditch the SSD, and install the 256GB Samsung USB Stick in ensure stable performance as the tech suggested. A few days later, same issue. Stuck in the middle of the road. A second tech from my local Tesla service center reached out and said that Steam was yet again using up too much system memory, and that Steam files cannot be saved to SSD OR a USB stick because that will result in a memory leak and use so much system memory that the vehicle software will crash. Are you kidding me? This is like step 1 quality assurance when you test a new feature. Didn’t anyone at the factory use an SSD drive or USB stick to support steam? Nobody thought to check expanded memory functionality with Steam? My 2022 MS Plaid only has 16Gb of onboard memory and Tesla knowingly released Steam into the wild which contains 20GB-50GB games all day long? What did they think would happen? It’s really infuriating that Tesla would release Steam in a Christmas firmware update in this state. Crashing vehicle software around the world and leaving drivers vulnerable in this way. I just hope people who are using Steam to play games in their vehicles with either a USB Stick or SSD become aware of this issue and take precautions. For now, you’re stuck with the internal 16gigs if you want a working vehicle.

You are not alone alexbmp. I have had the bug ever since I installed Steam on my 2022 Model S Plaid in December. It crashes the car upon Steam booting up. My two main screens go off and stay blank for 3-4 minutes till I see the Tesla logo again that it has rebooted. Scary stuff. The crazy part is sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I would say I am pretty much guaranteed to crash the infotainment system 50% of the time if I try to use Steam. It's a major major bug and I am also surprised that nobody is discussing it. You are the 1st one I have found online on this subject after weeks of trying to find similar owners with this bug. I figured I would wait another month or two to download a few more software updates and my car is now on the latest (2023.2.11). Steam even did an update as of yesterday yet I crashed again upon trying it. Didn't even get to try a game. I am starting to think that it doesn't have enough memory on the internal storage of the car. It might be recommended to 'format the USB drive' inside the arcade/steam start screen and dedicate a big chunk of that to Steam besides Sentry mode videos. It is my humble opinion that formatting a 500GB-1TB USB or NVme drive to dedicate it to Steam could make the problem go away instead of relying on what's built into the car as is. In either case - something is clearly off especially when I hear others have no such rebooting issues and seem to enjoy Steam without fuss. Grrrrrr.

 

[osarda]

Because, as we've said, - this is only affecting you, it appears. Many of us are using external storage without any issue, myself included. If it's a strange bug with your car, - that's unfortunate, but it doesn't warrant yelling how the car is terrible and dangerous etc etc.

Make that two - same problem on my end on a 2022 Model S Plaid.

 

[WilliamG]

Make that two - same problem on my end on a 2022 Model S Plaid.

Build date/last 3 of VIN?

 

[manole]

Perhaps there is a hardware issue with the controller. Mine crashes regularly and I’m using the older Xbox controller. Will try with a PS5 controller when I get a chance.