Tesla Allegedly Offered To Pay Indie Creators In Exposure Bucks For In-Car Games
Photo 84927722 © VanderWolfImages | Dreamstime.com
If you thought Tesla’s run-ins over gaming were over, there’s more. If you haven’t heard, about a year ago, the automaker was under investigation for enabling video games in its car interfaces even for vehicles on the move. While it would expressly frown upon drivers launching the games on the road, users were still able to tap through the warning and get back to playing. Under pressure by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla disabled in-motion gameplay.
Later, the firm teamed up with video game marketplace Steam to potentially make an entire library of 50,000 titles playable in electric cars.
And oh, it just keeps going. Everyone, it’s time to hear his story. His story is about one indie game developer’s brush with Tesla, which purportedly wanted to install his game, Her Story, in its vehicles.
The award-winning crime fiction game is an interactive narrative of a woman who is interviewed several times by the police over the disappearance of her husband. To stitch her full story, the player will have to sift through footage from a database stored in a computer and put two and two together.
Sam Barlow, the creator of Her Story, said he was approached by the company to add his project to its infotainment system. When he asked how much he was being paid to onboard the game, Tesla supposedly denied that compensation was involved and said he should factor in how much exposure he was getting.
Barlow let in on this encounter via Twitter—Tesla boss Elon Musk’s new dominion—in response to news that the social network is considering charging already-verified users up to US$20 to hold on to their blue checkmarks.
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
— Sam Barlow 🔥 Buy IMMORTALITY! (@mrsambarlow) October 31, 2022
“Her Story in a car remains one of the silliest ideas I’ve heard,” the game developer added.
It turns out Barlow wasn’t the only one to have been roped into the bullpen. Cabel Sasser, whose software company Panic Inc. published the ever-popular Untitled Goose Game, said he was able to relate.
“Horrific self driving vehicle crash. Police suspect mischievous goose”
— Sam Barlow 🔥 Buy IMMORTALITY! (@mrsambarlow) October 31, 2022
As ridiculously wealthy as Musk is, the billionaire—and, by extension, his company Tesla—hasn’t gotten into the habit of paying creatives. The anecdotes echo an episode from 2018 when Musk was criticized for plastering an artist’s illustration of a farting unicorn onto a mug without permission. The artwork was later brought to Tesla’s own car UI.
Back then, Musk also insisted that the creator should be grateful about the exposure bucks he was getting.
“He can sue for money if he wants, but that’s kind lame,” Musk commented in a since-deleted tweet. “If anything, this attention increased his mug sales.”
[via Digital Trends and Rock Paper Shotgun, cover photo 84927722 © VanderWolfImages | Dreamstime.com]
