Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: "Red Dead Redemption 2" as well as "Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced" and likely all other Rockstar games accessible via the Rockstar Games Launcher
• Steam AppID of the game: 1174180

System Information

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080

• Video driver version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 610.57.04

• Kernel version: 7.1.13-200.fc44.x86_64

• Link to full system information report as Gist

• Proton version: 11.0-2

• Additional iGPU:

  • deviceName = AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 8-Core Processor (RADV RAPHAEL_MENDOCINO)
  • driverID = DRIVER_ID_MESA_RADV
  • driverName = radv
  • driverInfo = Mesa 26.1.8
  • conformanceVersion = 1.4.0.0
  • mesa-vulkan-drivers-26.1.8-1.fc44.x86_64
  • mesa-vulkan-drivers-26.1.8-1.fc44.i686

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.

Note

I tried fixing this error using various LLMs but didn't manage. I do not understand the specifics of what happened either, so all text below was written by Claude. Have mercy on me.

Symptoms

Steam auto-installs and launches the Rockstar Games Launcher (RGL) when starting Red Dead Redemption 2. RGL's own sign-in page loads successfully, but sign-in fails every time with:

"An error occurred while authenticating with Rockstar Games services (Code: 2)."

Clicking Retry (or entering offline mode) reproduces the identical error. This is not a network, account, or DNS issue — Rockstar's servers respond with HTTP 200 to every request throughout (GetDefaultApps, marketing.json, etc.), and native reachability tests to Rockstar's domains succeed.

RGL's own logs (launcher.log, socialclub_launcher.log, ipc.log — attached) show the actual failure: a local IPC channel to a freshly-spawned Social Club Helper (CEF renderer) subprocess connects successfully, then drops 2–4 seconds later, immediately after the sign-in page finishes loading (START_SIGN_IN → FINISHED loading Social Club UI). This is what surfaces as OnScAuthError with fatal error invoked (2) in launcher.log — the "Code: 2" in the dialog is this raw error code, not a Rockstar-server-side auth failure. Confirmed via matched timestamps across all three logs, on four separate runs — including a clean reproduction on the current stable Proton 11.0-2. ipc.log also shows a separate, non-fatal rgsc_launcher_0 named-pipe warning (failed to create pipe: 2) at the very start of every single attempt — consistent across all three Proton versions tested, though not itself fatal.

On Proton 9.0 specifically, the failure shape changes: RGL never reaches the sign-in screen at all, instead showing "The CEF browser for the Rockstar Games Launcher crashed and could not restart."

The identical RGL build (Social Club SDK 2.4.0.240 / Launcher 1.0.109.3031), signed into the same Rockstar account, authenticates successfully every time when installed and run via Lutris (a plain Wine prefix) — entirely outside the Steam client, Proton, and the Steam Linux Runtime.

GTA5 (AppID 3240220), which shares the same Rockstar Games Launcher/Social Club component, shows the identical symptom.

Reproduction

1. Launch Red Dead Redemption 2 (AppID 1174180) from Steam via Proton.
2. Steam/Proton auto-installs and launches Rockstar Games Launcher inside the game's Proton prefix.
3. RGL loads its sign-in page successfully (reaches PAGE_READY → START_SIGN_IN).
4. Within 2–4 seconds, sign-in fails with "An error occurred while authenticating with Rockstar Games services (Code: 2)." 100% reproducible on my system.

Variables tested that do not change the outcome:

• Proton version: Proton Experimental, GE-Proton11-6, Proton 9.0 (different failure mode — CEF crash instead), Proton 10.0-4
• Display server: Wayland, X11
• Monitor count: 1, 2
• Steam Linux Runtime: default, and explicitly disabled per-game via SteamTinkerLaunch (as a Steam Launch Option, so the toggle is actually effective — it has no effect when SLR params aren't visible to STL, e.g. when STL is set as the Compatibility Tool instead)
• Steam Overlay: default, and disabled
• Proton prefix: full compatdata wipe and reinstall vs. persistent prefix
• Network/DNS: socialclub.rockstargames.com and gamedownloads.rockstargames.com reachable via curl; system clock correct; no VPN or proxy active

Variable that does change the outcome:

• Installing and launching the same Rockstar Games Launcher build via Lutris (plain Wine, outside the Steam client/Proton/Steam Linux Runtime pipeline entirely) — sign-in succeeds immediately and reliably, every time.

This points to something specific to Steam's launch pipeline for Proton games — independent of Proton version, the Steam Linux Runtime container, and the Steam Overlay — rather than a Wine/CEF compatibility issue in general, since the same launcher build works outside that pipeline on the identical system.

socialclub_launcher.log
launcher.log
ipc.log
launcher.01.log

Note: steam-1174180.log.xz.zip contains the Proton log compressed with xz (much better ratio than gzip on a log this size — GitHub doesn't accept .xz directly, so it's wrapped in a .zip). To read it:

• unzip steam-1174180.log.xz.zip
• xz -d steam-1174180.log.xz

steam-1174180.log.xz.zip