Games not starting in Steam on Bazzite
Hello, I have a "hit or miss" problem with Steam games right now in Bazzite....Quite a few of my games start fine, but other games that are supposedly fine (according to ProtonDB) do not start for me, no matter what Proton version I try (and I've tried almost all of them--including the Glorious Eggroll version). The first log is from Starfield. The game very briefly shows a black screen like it's about to start up, and then the black screen disappears, and I'm back to desktop. The second log is Crysis Remastered, which doesn't even start up at all. No screen appears. The green play button changes to a blue "Stop" button, and Steam says it's running, but nothing shows up. Eventually, it just goes back to a green play button. Once again, I've methodically gone through just about every single Proton version. ProtonDB says this is a game that has no issues whatsoever. For me, it will not start in Bazzite. Any ideas?
79 Replies
try deleting the prefix before changing proton version
I'm on the desktop version of Bazzite, so I'm assuming the file structure is a bit different than the game mode version. Are you saying I need to delete the folders named "Proton 10.0" and so on?
or is this something that's in the root steam directory?
no
the prefix, should be in compatdata folder
you can also delete it from protontricks
the filestructure is identical with gamemode or not
btw delete individual prefix not the whole compatdata folder
I assume I'm in the right spot?
I only see a "legacycompat" and not a "compatdata" folder
nvm, I found it
That's interesting. I only see three folders in the compatdata folder, and none of them have the Crysis Remastered App ID
Ok, this is all I'm seeing in my Steam compatdata folder. Crysis Remaster app ID is 1715130. When I start up the game (and choose a proton), it says it's downloading that proton, but I never see a folder appear in compatdata. Could that be the problem?
Am I in the wrong location?
Ok, hold on. Sorry, I know I probably seem like a dummy, but I'm learning as I go here. It looks like it creates a compatdata folder in every single drive that Steam uses. So, I'm in the wrong spot.
Ok, so I deleted the pfx folder, and now when I click "play," it doesn't do anything but quickly flash blue and right back to the green play button. And no new pfx folder is created
Here's the latest log
Ok, I deleted everything under the games' ID folder, and then switched up Protons. With Proton Experimental, it created new files under the game's ID folder (including a new pfx folder), and seems to be just hung on the blue "stop" button. No game is starting (it's been about 10 minutes), and Steam says it's running, but no game has appeared.
On the Starfield front, I just uninstalled it and tried to reinstall, and it said "download failed." Now that is on a different drive. I'm thinking the starfield problem may have something to do with drive permissions
Meanwhile, Crysis Remastered still says it's running, but I don't see a single window popping up
what format is this drive?
btrfs
nothing attempted to run here
close steam entirely
open steam in a terminal by typing steam
and launch the game
post the full output of that here
I suspect your permissions are wrong
Hung on "running" again....says the game is running, but no game ever pops up
And here it is with using a different Proton (8.0-5).....also hung on Steam saying the game is "running" but nothing appearing on screen.
you are running from external drive
the compatdata should be in that drive folder
cat /etc/fstab
post outputLABEL=HDD Games /run/media/system/HDD_Games nofail 0 0 #New Partition /run/media/system/HDD_Games /dev/sdf nofail 0 0 #New Partition /dev/sdf /run/media/alienone/HDD\040Games nofail 0 0 #New Partition /dev/sdf1 /run/media/system/HDD\040Games nofail 0 0 # Created by anaconda on Tue May 6 04:16:16 2025
Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk/'.
See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info.
After editing this file, run 'systemctl daemon-reload' to update systemd
units generated from this file.
Updated by bootc-fstab-edit.service
UUID=afa9546e-b1d9-4f64-9f73-7b208ba9f248 / btrfs subvol=root-0,noatime,lazytime,commit=120,discard=async,compress-force=zstd:1,space_cache=v2,ro 0 0
UUID=efaf258a-b8db-4fe3-8a1c-6723f649b364 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2
UUID=A4C8-ECE3 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077,shortname=winnt 0 2
UUID=afa9546e-b1d9-4f64-9f73-7b208ba9f248 /var btrfs subvol=var-0,noatime,lazytime,commit=120,discard=async,compress-force=zstd:1,space_cache=v2 0 0
UUID=afa9546e-b1d9-4f64-9f73-7b208ba9f248 /var/home btrfs subvol=home-0,noatime,lazytime,commit=120,discard=async,compress-force=zstd:1,space_cache=v2 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /run/media/system/New_Media btrfs nofail 0 0
/dev/sda4 /run/media/system/SSD_Games btrfs noatime,nodiratime,nofail,noatime,lazytime,commit=120,discard=async,compress-force=zstd:1,space_cache=v2 0 0
The two main drives that I've been trying to run games from are the ones labeled "HDD Games" and "SSD Games"
I'm not completely sure what I'm looking at there, but why is it that the HDD Games drive is at the top rather than at the bottom with all the other drive listings? Is that creating an issue?
yeah your fstab looks a bit cursed
i recommend you to remove every line that doesnt starts with
# or UUID and let the automounter do its thing
after that do sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo mount -a and make sure no error is outputted before rebootingOk, thanks. I'll do it this evening after I get home from work and report back
what's the command for editing the fstab?
nevermind, I looked it up
Now the fstab looks a lot better
Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk/'.
See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info.
After editing this file, run 'systemctl daemon-reload' to update systemd
units generated from this file.
Updated by bootc-fstab-edit.service
UUID=afa9546e-b1d9-4f64-9f73-7b208ba9f248 / btrfs subvol=root-0,noatime,lazytime,commit=120,discard=async,compress-force=zstd:1,space_cache=v2,ro 0 0
UUID=efaf258a-b8db-4fe3-8a1c-6723f649b364 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2
UUID=A4C8-ECE3 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077,shortname=winnt 0 2
UUID=afa9546e-b1d9-4f64-9f73-7b208ba9f248 /var btrfs subvol=var-0,noatime,lazytime,commit=120,discard=async,compress-force=zstd:1,space_cache=v2 0 0
UUID=afa9546e-b1d9-4f64-9f73-7b208ba9f248 /var/home btrfs subvol=home-0,noatime,lazytime,commit=120,discard=async,compress-force=zstd:1,space_cache=v2 0 0
However, Crysis Remastered will still not start up.
I tried to uninstall and reinstall Starfield, and now Starfield will not even download. It tells me "download failed." That tells me that maybe there's some permission issues.
I tried sudo chown alienone:alienone /run/media/system/SSD_Games which seemed to work (no error), but I still cannot download it
however, it seems like everything is fine as far as permissions elsewhere....it's boggling my mind as to what the problem is
try clearing steam download cache
That didn't work. download still fails
well, hold on......I was able to download a different game (Stray) to the same drive. Let me see if I can clear again....might have to do with the game itself and not the drive
yeah, weird....it's not the drive, because I can download other games. It could be Starfield itself
see if there are any rogue file in the steamapps folder like temp or downloading
There were....I deleted, cleared download cache again, made sure the game was uninstalled, tried it again, and it will not download to that drive. Super weird. However, it is downloading to my HDD Games drive. I'm going to let that finish and then see if it will allow me to move the game over to the SSD Games drive after it's downloaded
make sure to check the steamapps folder in the target drive btw
each external drive has its own
Ok, I think it's definitely a permissions issue. I tried deleting the Starfield folder,and it said I didn't have access to the ".Trash-1000" folder, and so then I went into the properties of the drive and tried to make sure my access permissions were good and checked the "apply changes to all subfolders and their contents," and got an error message that said I couldn't modify the ownership of a file in Cyberpunk 2077 because I have "insufficient access to the file to perform the change." Any idea on how to get control of this drive back?
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /path/to/foldershould I do while mounted or unmounted?
mounted
ok, that seemed to work without error. But, still cannot delete the folder. So, now I've checked the properties of the folder itself, and the owner is "nfsnobody" and it will not allow me to change permissions through the properties interface.
is the drive ntfs?
no, btrfs
very weird
although I think the game might have been installed to another drive while in windows and then moved (using steam) over to that drive
what is
mount | grep path/to/folder
only include the first 4 folder
till ssd_games
oh btw you are supposed to chown on that too
so the whole drive get chowned
where do I put the chown in that command sequence?
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /run/media/system/SSD_Games
if you are chowning the steamapp folder beforeok, that ran successfully, but folder will still not delete. I can go into the folder and see that everything is in there. If I right-click any file in there, the option to send it to the trash is greyed out
is there a admin command-line level folder deletion command that might work?
sudo rm -r /path/to/folder
be careful
try -rf if it denied
does that tell you anything?
I am willing to bet that these Crysis Remastered and Starfield issues are related. I'm pretty sure I installed both of those games while on my Windows Boot, possibly moved them from another drive, and then tried starting them up when on my Bazzite boot, and now because there is a permissions issue, it's causing issues with downloads and starting the game up due to access rights
I'm ready to just reformat this SSD drive if it fixes things. I also think I need to somehow fix my Proton 9 install......I've only got like 6 games installed, and that's the only thing on the drive
You missed the rm
Ok, so the way I had my drive set up was the Bazzite OS drive is on an 8TB SSD. I had half of that reserved for Bazzite, and the other half was a partition that I had called "SSD Games," which is the partition that was causing me issues. So, I just finished rebooting into GPARTED and deleting the SSD Games partition and resizing my main Linux internal drive to just be the entire 8TB with no separate partitions. Now I am moving Starfield from the HDD Drive over to the internal drive and we'll see how that goes.
hopefully that takes care of any weird permission issues
Now it boots up to a black screen for about 1 to 2 minutes and then crashes to desktop. I've tried about 4 different Protons
And once again, Crysis Remastered says it's running, but nothing's on-screen. I'm at a loss.
So, I've went through Doom Eternal, ES IV: Oblivion Remastered, ES V: Skyrim Special Edition, Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced, Last Epoch, Torchlight II, Borderlands GOTY Enhanced, Cyberpunk 2077, Half Life 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Death Stranding Director's Cut, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, No Rest for the Wicked, and Black Mesa, and every single one of those games fire up and work (on both drives) with no issue whatsoever. It's only Starfield and Crysis Remastered that refuse to start up. Now, it's not like those two are my top two favorite games (and I could always flip over to Windows to play them if necessary), but what bugs me is that on ProtonDB (and here on this Discord), everyone else is saying they have zero issues starting up either game. There has to be something up on my system that's causing them to not start correctly.
Your drive
Your permissions are wrong
I've typed the "take ownership" command on these drives multiple times with no error
and now I've installed Starfield on my main Linux internal drive, which I supposedly have root access to
New install location for Starfield is: /home/alienone/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Starfield/
Not an ownership issue
And proton is also there, or still on your drive with permission issues?
There is where I have Protons installed right now...at least the ones that Steam can see. Let me see where ProtonUp-QT has things
looks like /var/home/alienone/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/
Set the launch option to
PROTON_LOG=1 %command%
And launch the game
A log will be made in your home directory, upload it hereEXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
generic windows error
Validate your game files
That's the "verify integrity of files" thing, right?
Yep
ok, doing that now
all files verified successfully
continues to crash to desktop after going to a black screen for a few seconds
I could try moving it to another drive, but my guess at this point is that's not the issue
I do have another SSD I can move it to if necessary though. I know this game in particular has to be run from an SSD
So, I just moved it to the other SSD, deleted the compatdata, and switched it to Proton Experimental. Same thing.
The game just refuses to start
On ProtonDB, I came across this post on Starfield from 4 months ago from a user who was using Fedora 41 (Workstation Edition), which I know Bazzite is based off of:
"Tinker Steps:Switch to older version: 8.0-5, Set launch options
bash -c 'exec "${@/Starfield.exe/sfse_loader.exe}"' -- %command%
Instability:Occasionally
I speculate that my crashes are a Fedora/SELinux specific issue because my system hangs for around 2-3 seconds each time the game crashes which is exactly what happens when running buggy g++ programs that only crash on Fedora but not on other systems.
I switched to proton 8 and it crashes a little less often. I also found out through experimentation that most crashes happen right after saving your game and they especially happen more frequently if you save right after loading into a new environment. I'd say my improvements get the crashes down to once every 1-2 hours now which is an improvement. Maybe don't choose a SELinux distro if playing Starfield."
He thinks that crashes on Starfield are a Fedora/SELinux specific issue and that's why no one else seems to be having these sort of crashes. He somehow managed to get it running, but he says that the crashes have not stopped. For me, I can't even get into the title screen before it crashes, but that's the only thing I've been able to come across that seems somewhat relatable
So, I switched over to Windows 10 and started Starfield.....no problem. So, there's gotta be something to that with Starfield/Crysis Remastered in particular
So, you were right....there was definitely a permissions issue happening. Every time I switched over to windows and Steam would try to update a game, that same game on Bazzite side would then not be able to update or write files because Windows had somehow taken over permissions for it. Thanks to "Mike's Tech Tips" on YouTube, I found out that there was actually a few Windows registry keys I needed to edit in order to prevent this from happening. So, I did that, and now I no longer have disk write issues when switching back and forth between operating systems. However.....that STILL did not fix the issue of Starfield and Crysis Remastered not starting up properly in Bazzite. So, something else entirely is going on there. I uninstalled and reinstalled both games, verified their files, tried different startup commands, tried a dozen different Protons.....none of them worked. So, I'm not sure what's happening there. In any case, I appreciate y'all trying to help. The issue is not solved, but I did learn a lot more about Bazzite and permissions and solved the problems created when switching back and forth between operating systems, so not all was lost! Thanks again for your help. If I want to play either of those games in the future, I'll just switch over to Windows. Maybe I'll revisit the issue in the future to see if future implementations of Proton or Bazzite fix it.
The lack of those registry entries meant you had the wrong user
That requires manual intervention to fix, no future implementation of proton or bazzite will fix this problem
It's user error
Hello, yes, the registry entries needed to be fixed for permissions, but as I detailed above, fixing permissions did NOT fix the issue. The issue remained DESPITE the fix.
However, I am back here to say that I did wind up fixing the issue of Dead Space 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Crysis Remastered, and Starfield, and all of those games did not start (or hung at a black screen and crashed back to desktop as described) because of a interrelated problem directly related to my system. The problem wasn't permissions (although it was good to have those fixed, and that did fix the issue of games not updating, thanks) and the problem wasn't necessarily what Proton I was using. The problem was related to how the games were utilizing the number of CPU cores I have in my system. Apparently, this is an age-old problem (which I had forgotten I had encountered before in Dead Space 2 years years ago in Windows) where the game itself would crash because (and forgive my n00b speak here, because I may not be using completely correct terminology) an exception would occur due to the number of CPU cores being more than the game was expecting.
The issue is detailed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadSpace/comments/v6i23y/dead_space_2_crashing_on_startup/
as well as on several old EA forum posts
The fix to get the aforementioned games to start up on a system with a large amount of cores (mine has 36) involves adding startup commands in the game's properties that would force the game to utilize fewer cores---at least that's how I understand it.
Again, I may be utilizing an improper way to explain it, but this is what fixed my issue with those games I was originally complaining about (Starfield & Crysis Remastered) as well as the Deus Ex games and Dead Space 2. All of them began working once I put in the right startup command.
As an example, this is the launch command that got Crysis Remastered to work for me: WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY="4:0,1,2,3" %command%
And, this is the command that got Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to work for me: taskset -c 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 %command%
Starfield has this command, and it now starts up with no issues: taskset -c 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 %command%
All of that is somehow related to the number of CPU cores the system has and those games in particular hanging due to that--which is not user error. If anything, it's game developer error.
That aside, I do appreciate the help getting my fstab file corrected and the permissions issue highlighted....Those fixes certainly needed to happen as well. I'm happy to report these games starting up in Linux are no longer an issue for me.
My fix also explains why other people had no problems starting up these games and I was having problems starting them up--because the issue was directly related to how those games in particular were reacting to my hardware on startup (number of CPU cores specifically). I hope that this thread winds up helping someone else who may be in a situation as unique as mine.
Your issue remains permissions
There's multiple layers to permissions, including file ownership which is fucked because of this mistake
Crysis does not need that workaround, I know because I run it on a 48 core CPU
I fixed the permissions issue
After I fixed the permission issue, Crysis still did not start up.
The only way Crysis would start up is if I added that startup command.
I reformatted two drives and three different partitions using GPartition started from the BIOS as btrfs partitions and started up in Bazzite without even going into Windows during troubleshooting the permissions issue. That meant that Windows had not even touched the drives at all or messed with permissions when I reformatted the drives.
I then re-installed both games while in Bazzite
and went through twelve different protons, deleting the pfx file every single time I tried a new one
Every single time, those games would not start.
Then, when I entered the aforementioned startup command, the game started up with zero issue.
How does that have anything to do with permissions?
The GParted program used to partition and format the drives as btrfs was downloaded while in Bazzite as an ISO and put on a bootable USB drive.
is there some kind of hard-locked permission burned into the drive's circutry that is circumventing a reformat while outside of an operating system environment?
and, if so, how is that somehow bypassed by entering a CPU core startup command in Steam?
Is your system a single CPU system? My system is a double CPU system using Xeon processors....perhaps that's it.
On the Windows side, the only game that replicates the startup problem is Dead Space 2, and the only way I fixed that (on the Windows side) back in the day was to tell my system to run on 1 core. Starfield starts right up on the Windows side. Both sides can update the game. There's no more disk write or file locked issues anymore. Windows has registry entries for the right "1000 level super user" (not sure how else to term that) on those drives
Perhaps I sound dumb to you. All I can say is that I went as far as completely resetting/recompartmentalizing/reformatting the drives in order to wipe any sort of permissions issue I had before, I reinstalled the games while in Bazzite, and the games would still not start up---until I entered those startup commands. Make of that what you will.
GitHub
Certain Games will not launch via Proton If you have a high CPU Thr...
I am opening this issue to track all the games that will not launch specifically on high thread count systems with Proton but launch on native Windows without issue. The commands taskset and numact...
That right there......is EXACTLY what my issue was. I just encountered the same thing with Elden Ring this evening. Apparently, any game utilizing EasyAntiCheat has some kind of 40-logical cores limit to it according to my research. And, that thread lists several other games with the same issue.
My double-Xeon processor system lists 72 as the number for my system (maybe due to hyperthreading?)....which is why I can run Steam games like Starfield/Elden Ring/Crysis Remastered with no problem on my Alienware laptop running Bazzite 42, and I could not run the same exact games on my desktop on the same exact OS without entering startup commands that limited core counts. Worth noting.