Nothing but exposure in return for the games being made available in Teslas.
Elon Musk completed his Twitter takeover last week, hence the billionaire being all over the news again since. Developers have taken that opportunity to reveal Tesla attempted to strike a deal to make their games playable in its cars, being offered nothing more than exposure in return.
Sam Barlow kicked things off on the now Musk-owned social media platform (via Eurogamer). Barlow was approached by Tesla as the company wanted to make Her Story playable in its cars. Upon asking how much he would get in return, Tesla replied nothing, stating the exposure of Her Story being available in its cars should be enough.
“Tesla once reached out to ask to put Her Story in a car. I asked how much they would pay for the license and to cover the engineering work- they suggested zero, that I consider the exposure I would get,” Barlow tweeted adding, “Her Story in a car remains one of the sillier ideas I’ve heard.” A great point and it turns out Barlow isn’t the only dev to have been approached by Tesla with an unflattering deal.
Untitled Goose Game dev Cabel Sasser has also weighed in, revealing he and the studio behind the game were also offered the sum total of zero dollars by Tesla to make the indie hit available through its cars. As Barlow playfully pointed out in his reply to Sasser, while the game’s goose might have had quite a bit of destruction pinned on it, a Tesla ending up in a ditch because someone was busy gaming while driving remains something you can’t blame on the virtual farm bird.
Tesla’s games aren’t supposed to be played while you’re driving, of course. Just while stationary or for others in the car to enjoy aside from the driver. Earlier this year Musk teased that Steam will be available through certain Tesla models. If that does happen in the future, that will presumably mean Tesla can circumvent the need to strike a deal with Barlow and Sasser since Her Story and Untitled Goose Game are both available through the platform.
