Steam unable to launch any games

tl;dr, steam won't launch anything. Play button spins a bit, no window appears, goes back to being a play button nearly instantly. I'm not familiar enough to know where to start troubleshooting, so please bear with me. Ran Steam via the terminal, I tend to see this spew every time, but nothing is standing out to me as particularly damning.
chdir "/var/mnt/games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Hardspace Shipbreaker"
Game Recording - would start recording game 1161580, but recording for this game is disabled
Adding process 33825 for gameID 1161580
ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/extest/libextest.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/var/home/cobalt/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/extest/libextest.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/var/home/cobalt/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/var/home/cobalt/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64): ignored.
pid 33828 != 33825, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
WARNING: discarding _NET_WM_PID 5 as invalid for X11 window - use specialized XCB_X11_TO_PID function!
Game Recording - game stopped [gameid=1161580]
Removing process 33825 for gameID 1161580
chdir "/var/mnt/games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Hardspace Shipbreaker"
Game Recording - would start recording game 1161580, but recording for this game is disabled
Adding process 33825 for gameID 1161580
ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/extest/libextest.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/var/home/cobalt/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/extest/libextest.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/var/home/cobalt/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/var/home/cobalt/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64): ignored.
pid 33828 != 33825, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
WARNING: discarding _NET_WM_PID 5 as invalid for X11 window - use specialized XCB_X11_TO_PID function!
Game Recording - game stopped [gameid=1161580]
Removing process 33825 for gameID 1161580
I'm on Bazzite 43, KDE + Nvidia flavor. Only layering ckb-next for the keyboard I use.
Solution:
Wild shit. Got it working. Unfortunately, nuking my external steam library did not work. Looking in my ~/.steam folder, I found a weird little folder with unprintable unicode characters (\034\310\f). Nuked that + all caches + configs, ran ujust fix-reset-steam, reinstalled a small game locally... Boom. Worked.
Jump to solution
25 Replies
CaramelCorn
CaramelCorn3d ago
out of curiousity, did you install these games fresh with this bazzite install? or are they leftover from a windows/other installation?
Cobalt
CobaltOP3d ago
Leftover from Windows. Let me guess, that's my problem? Although, even moving/uninstalling+reinstalling to the /var/home Steam default location causes the same symptoms. Unless by attaching a library that was brought over from Windows was enough to cause problems? With that said, I did convert the drive to btrfs before trying to launch anything.
Moon Shard
Moon Shard3d ago
ur drive is set to NTFS format and that's why u can't play them, u need to format drive to ext4 I know from experience as I tried to do same thing myself
CaramelCorn
CaramelCorn3d ago
ok so they were installed in windows, moved from ntfs to a btrfs partition, and then you pointed steam to that location-- and the other thing you tried was moving the same files to the default steam location if I'm understanding correctly first I'm wondering if you've made sure to set the proton-ge latest or proton experimental in the game compatibility settings in steam, second some people have been having some issues lately with pointing steam to existing files and repairing I can't remember off the top of my head how to solve the second possibility, something about backups
Moon Shard
Moon Shard3d ago
you would have to take the library on some external drive, format the drive you use for games to ext4 or so and then copy it back over and fix library after dropping stuff back in otherwise i haven't figured any other ways
CaramelCorn
CaramelCorn3d ago
btrfs also works, but yeah I think they're saying they tried that :/ hopefully it's just a dumb little problem like that
Moon Shard
Moon Shard3d ago
Haven't tried that. I don't think I've had that as option when formating partition
CaramelCorn
CaramelCorn3d ago
ah yeah it's the other acceptable modern Linux partition format
Cobalt
CobaltOP3d ago
Hey, yep, I did convert from ntfs to btrfs. Now, that was an in-place conversion using ntfs2btrfs, so I recognize that might contribute to issues.
Moon Shard
Moon Shard3d ago
Did you backup files and games or kept them on same drive when converting?
Cobalt
CobaltOP3d ago
Kept them on the same drive when converting. Afterwards, I uninstalled and reinstalled a game to the same drive to test it out. I could nuke the entire SteamLibrary folder and try it fresh.
Moon Shard
Moon Shard3d ago
Im curious if other games are in tact or something corrupted It's probably hit or miss and also curiosity if its not breaking anything
Cobalt
CobaltOP3d ago
I've only got a steam library on this drive, so, probably best to just nuke it and reinstall everything cleanly.
Moon Shard
Moon Shard3d ago
maybe you will get some funny glitch, or messy textures, give it a try hehe
CaramelCorn
CaramelCorn3d ago
I have no idea, win2btrfs is an unknown in this do games freshly installed via steam launch correctly? just a game that you don't already have installed that would likely fix all of your issues
Moon Shard
Moon Shard3d ago
seems like it works fine now, im just curious if preinstalled games after convertion work
Cobalt
CobaltOP3d ago
No, they don't.
Moon Shard
Moon Shard3d ago
darn format drive and make it ext4 with disks and just fresh install games that will make it all work fine
CaramelCorn
CaramelCorn3d ago
ah weird, yeah reformat would be the last resort for me at this point
Cobalt
CobaltOP3d ago
Alright. Thanks for the input. I'll report back with what I figure out.
Solution
Cobalt
Cobalt3d ago
Wild shit. Got it working. Unfortunately, nuking my external steam library did not work. Looking in my ~/.steam folder, I found a weird little folder with unprintable unicode characters (\034\310\f). Nuked that + all caches + configs, ran ujust fix-reset-steam, reinstalled a small game locally... Boom. Worked.
Cobalt
CobaltOP3d ago
I had the foresight to shove everything I had previously installed into a custom collection so I could really quickly queue them all up for reinstall. (Thank you gigabit internet... Sorry for the extra write wear, ssd.)
zewm
zewm3d ago
Are you using the steam backup/restore feature? I find that if you just copy the files over manually, steam redownloads the entire game again.
Moon Shard
Moon Shard3d ago
U probably have to fix library or restart steam and then try but i doubt restore feature acty checks for game files itself
Cobalt
CobaltOP3d ago
Oh I didn't even have room to back up the installs before nuking the other drive. I figured I'd re-download everything. Either way, seems like it was the actual steam cache/config files themselves that were at the heart of the problem, and ujust fix-reset-steam doesn't touch those (maybe it should...)

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