linux steam proton game troubleshooting

writing this quick bit because everyone who runs linux is either a total asshole, or doesn't know anything, or a total asshole who doesn't know anything.

first off, go into your bios and clear your ftpm

why?  i dont really know, nobody could or would explain this to me, i read that it causes 'stutters' in some games but it also appears to be one factor that causes a lot of (seemingly) DRM protected games to crash on startup for no reason i can discern, something to do with the RNG?  no fucking clue

second, if a specific game doesnt work try these things:

1. remove the steam game drive/folder from steam and re-add it, try to repair it

2. back up the game files to another drive or folder, uninstall the game, restore it from backup

3. remove the actual proton folders, steam runtime folders, etc, and the associated .acf files (use grep!), exit from steam, go back in, run a repair on the games in question

4. nuke everything in compatdata and/or compatibilitytools.d

5. nuke everything in shadercache, look for any vk3d cache files, etc

6. dont run the game from ntfs or if you do make sure you move your compatdata folder to a ext4 drive or something and symbolic link it back to your steam folder

double and triple check you have all the necessary libraries installed, in cachyos for example, there is a option to install 'gaming packages', some of these might be critical, some of them might be 32 bit, or for video, etc, or for wine compatibility, amek sure this stuff is all installed and/or try using a flatpak installation of steam

if you choose to use a flatpak installation of steam be prepared to fuck around with flatseal forever

in my experience the following things did NOT make any difference and were a complete and total waste of time and money that i recommend you do not do, please, learn from me:

 1. switching from amd to nvidia or vice versa.  both cards work more or less perfectly in linux/mesa/etc now so dont waste your time here

2. amdvlk vs radeonv seems to make no real difference

3. specific revision of mesa after 24 or 25 seems to make no difference

4. specific revision of proton or fork seems to make no difference and in fact i learned that switching proton versions can trigger denuvo and other DRM to silently fail without any sort of error

5. no kernel option that i tried ever made any difference to this specific issue

6. almost no proton launch options that i can think of ever helped a non functional title, it has happened though

7. if some game tries to install the EA app let it, and if it fails or gives an error, game might still work if you relaunch it and kill of hte tiny 10 pixel high title bar window that opens

8. if i recall nvidia still has some weird nomodeset issue that you might have to check out (kernel option)

9. proton logging is basically useless as nothing weird actually generates log messages it just fails

10. wayland vs x11 makes no difference to your games

 11. more than occasionally you might find a cracked or hacked version of a game works where the DRM protected version does not

 12. bios settings like above 4g decode, smt, svm, rebar, secure boot, csm, memory encryption, etc, infinity fabric freq, ram freq, none of that shit made any difference as far as i can tell every possible configuration of that is more or less table under linux -- however, fucking with these settings can also trigger denuvo silent lockouts

 

a note on the silent lockouts, im not 100% sure if i encountered these or not but i did encounter people talking about them while researching the issue, and it sounds like some games may lock you out and just not launch for up to 24 hours after detecting system changes they dont like

this does not happen on windows, with the same titles, because of course it doesnt