Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Stellar Blade
• Steam AppID of the game: 3489700

System Information

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090
• Video driver version: NVIDIA 610.57.04
• Kernel version: 7.1.8-artix1-3
• Link to full system information report as Gist: N/A
• Proton version: Proton 11

I confirm:

• [x] that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• [x] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

Symptoms

Stellar Blade crashed immediately after startup under Proton 11.

The Proton log showed an access violation in xaudio2_9.dll:

Exception 0xc0000005
L"xaudio2_9.dll" + 000000000000D15A

The game also ships its own XAudio2 redistributable at:

Engine/Binaries/ThirdParty/Windows/XAudio2_9/x64/xaudio2_9redist.dll

Replacing the prefix's system32/xaudio2_9.dll with this xaudio2_9redist.dll allowed the game to start successfully.

The replacement caused a separate audio issue because my PipeWire PulseAudio server was not running. After starting pipewire, wireplumber, and pipewire-pulse, audio worked correctly.

The issue therefore appears to be related to Proton's xaudio2_9.dll rather than the game itself.

Reproduction

1. Install and launch Stellar Blade with Proton 11.

2. The game crashes during startup.

3. The Proton log shows an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in xaudio2_9.dll.

4. Replace the following file in the Proton prefix:

   compatdata/3489700/pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/xaudio2_9.dll

   with:

   common/StellarBlade/Engine/Binaries/ThirdParty/Windows/XAudio2_9/x64/xaudio2_9redist.dll

5. Launch the game again. The game starts successfully.