HGLprogressive-amaranth
Issue launching Epic Game-games on Steam Deck
Jusst got my Steam deck and installed Heroic. I've used Heroic lots on my laptop (Ubuntu 25.04) without any issues, but on the Steam deck I have a very strange issue.
Issue: Whenever I try to launch a game I own through Epic Games (Any gave, I've tried about 5 games ranging from indies to AAA) nothing happens. The GUI signals "Launching" and then "Playing", but nothing happens and no game starts. Nothing happens if I click the "stop playing" button either. I've tried different Wine paths, used default Wine prefix and prefixes to GOG games I know working, disabled/enabled every setting I can think of but the issue still persists. No resources are being used, the game just won't start. Same if I use the start menu short cuts. The log seems to indicate that nothing happens after it locates the Wine prefix. The first Wine command is never run, and the game doesn't start.
Log: https://0x0.st/KSS-.log
Hack solution: How weird it might sound, I do have a solution. If I choose "add game" in Heroic, add the .exe through a generic placeholder title, use the exact same settings, the game works flawlessly, but it clutters my library (and should not be necessary, right?). The game starts and quits as expected. Even if I switch the properly installed games wine prefix to "Title" prefix, it won't launch, but the "Title" placeholder I made from the .exe works when I try all my other prefixes. Here's a log from when I run the exact same .exe but through a generic solution:
Log: https://0x0.st/KSSo.log
The launcher installs "Redistributables (Epic) when I launch the title as it was installed, but it does not do that for the hack solution game. What I need to do however is to login to Epic Games through my browser to be able to play some of the games through the "hack solution". I'm guessing there's some error not showing up with the Epic redistributable that prevents the Wine executable from starting.
Any thoughts?
Issue: Whenever I try to launch a game I own through Epic Games (Any gave, I've tried about 5 games ranging from indies to AAA) nothing happens. The GUI signals "Launching" and then "Playing", but nothing happens and no game starts. Nothing happens if I click the "stop playing" button either. I've tried different Wine paths, used default Wine prefix and prefixes to GOG games I know working, disabled/enabled every setting I can think of but the issue still persists. No resources are being used, the game just won't start. Same if I use the start menu short cuts. The log seems to indicate that nothing happens after it locates the Wine prefix. The first Wine command is never run, and the game doesn't start.
Log: https://0x0.st/KSS-.log
Hack solution: How weird it might sound, I do have a solution. If I choose "add game" in Heroic, add the .exe through a generic placeholder title, use the exact same settings, the game works flawlessly, but it clutters my library (and should not be necessary, right?). The game starts and quits as expected. Even if I switch the properly installed games wine prefix to "Title" prefix, it won't launch, but the "Title" placeholder I made from the .exe works when I try all my other prefixes. Here's a log from when I run the exact same .exe but through a generic solution:
Log: https://0x0.st/KSSo.log
The launcher installs "Redistributables (Epic) when I launch the title as it was installed, but it does not do that for the hack solution game. What I need to do however is to login to Epic Games through my browser to be able to play some of the games through the "hack solution". I'm guessing there's some error not showing up with the Epic redistributable that prevents the Wine executable from starting.
Any thoughts?
Solution
Solution, in case it might help anyone (or if the devs can see this and implement a solution).
After running Heroic through terminal I could see one clear error message, that Heroic while launching could not locate the file 'home/deck/.var/app/com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl/config/heroic/areweanticheatyet.json'. Looked in the folder, and noope, no such file present. I tried creating an empty .json, or find a way for Heroic to update/create the file itself, but to no avail. After googling, I found the GitHub-project "Are We Anti Cheat Yet?", that tracks games with anti cheat support on Linux (https://github.com/AreWeAntiCheatYet/AreWeAntiCheatYet). Starting to suspect what the launcher was loking for, I found the list on the github as a .json called games.json (https://github.com/AreWeAntiCheatYet/AreWeAntiCheatYet/blob/master/games.json), copied that file to the target folder, renamed it "areweanticheatyet.json", and all of the sudden everything worked.
Note: I tried uninstalling and completley purging all Heroic files before a reinstall as well, but I had the same issue still. No such .json file was created during the install)
After running Heroic through terminal I could see one clear error message, that Heroic while launching could not locate the file 'home/deck/.var/app/com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl/config/heroic/areweanticheatyet.json'. Looked in the folder, and noope, no such file present. I tried creating an empty .json, or find a way for Heroic to update/create the file itself, but to no avail. After googling, I found the GitHub-project "Are We Anti Cheat Yet?", that tracks games with anti cheat support on Linux (https://github.com/AreWeAntiCheatYet/AreWeAntiCheatYet). Starting to suspect what the launcher was loking for, I found the list on the github as a .json called games.json (https://github.com/AreWeAntiCheatYet/AreWeAntiCheatYet/blob/master/games.json), copied that file to the target folder, renamed it "areweanticheatyet.json", and all of the sudden everything worked.
Note: I tried uninstalling and completley purging all Heroic files before a reinstall as well, but I had the same issue still. No such .json file was created during the install)
