Name of the game with compatibility issues: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered
Steam AppID of the game: 292030

System Information

• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (Ryzen 7 9800X3D)
• Video driver version: Mesa radv 26.2.4
• Kernel version: 7.2.8-1-cachyos
• Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/Snuffles20/223bc659bc55c46a5b9d5c0f230120ed
• Proton version: Experimental 11.0-20260924, I also tried: (Hotfix, CachyOS Proton 11.0-20260703, GE-Proton11-7-x86_64])

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

The game keeps crashing on me, mostly in menus and cutscenes, and only rarely out in the world. The game's own "The Witcher 3 has crashed" window shows up. It doesn't happen at the same moment every time. Sometimes I can play for a long time in the menus and all is fine but suddenly it just crashes and I have to relaunch the game. I have become paranoid and keep saving every 2 minutes.

This isn't the DLSS/Streamline or black screen stuff in #10194 and #10212. I'm on AMD, and the game runs fine until it dies.

I got tired of guessing, so I tried to figure it out with some AI. The AI read the Proton logs. It seems to be the same crash every time: a null pointer read in witcher3.exe at +0x3317E3 (rcx=0). I've seen the same address three times, and the two logs I kept have an identical call chain (+0x1D4D0D6, +0x27E0D00, +0x1AC5903). It's a worker thread, and there's nothing from vkd3d, DXVK or the driver in the backtrace.

Things I've checked: the kernel log has no GPU errors, files verified on 5.00c, mods off, GPU at stock power, and I get the same result on other Proton builds. This is on KDE Plasma/Wayland.

Steam lists the game as Deck Verified, and my short test on a Steam Deck seemed fine, so it's something about desktop setups, or at least mine.

Sorry i am a bit of a noob when it comes to this technical stuff I have used AI to help me with this bug report. I hope everything is correct and helpful I am just trying to play the game. Let me know if you need more information or if i should refrain from posting more bugreports. :)

Reproduction

Just play. Menus and cutscenes are where it usually happens, and it can take a while to hit.
It did seem to happen multiple times for me in the cutscene when arriving to Royal Palace in Vizima. I had to skip the cutscene to get further into the game.

witcher3-5.00c-dx12-crash.log.gz

Log attached with PROTON_LOG=1 (my username is replaced with USER).