Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: NCSoft PURPLE launcher (used for AION 2) — non-Steam game, added as a shortcut
• Steam AppID of the game: none (non-Steam shortcut)

System Information

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU (PRIME offload, Intel Arrow Lake iGPU primary)
• Driver/LLVM version: NVIDIA 615.78.08
• Kernel version: 7.2.11-200.fc44.x86_64
• Distro version: Fedora 44 Workstation
• Desktop session: GNOME 50.6 Wayland (game on XWayland)
• Link to full system information report as Gist
• Proton version: Proton Experimental (experimental-11.0-20261014), also GE-Proton11-10 / 11-9 / 10-x

Proton comparison

• Works with Proton Experimental: no — reproduced in a fresh, empty prefix
• Works with Proton Experimental bleeding-edge: not tested
• Works with latest Valve Proton stable: not tested
• Works with previous GE-Proton version: no (GE-Proton 10 and 11-9 also fail)
• Last known working: everything worked with PURPLE 2.26.921.11 (on GE-Proton11-7). The regression comes from the PURPLE update, not from Proton.

Launch options

VKD3D_FEATURE_LEVEL=12_1 __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only %command%

Symptoms

PURPLE auto-updated from 2.26.921.11 to 2.26.1019.7 (2026-10-19). Since then its helper process
Purple\2.26.1019.7\purple-agent\purple-agent.exe (32-bit, launched as purple-agent.exe -a Purple)
immediately shows a message box titled purple-agent.exe with the text "Initialization error 1".
PURPLE keeps relaunching the agent, so the popups pile up (14 instances observed). The launcher and
AION 2 itself still work.

The previous agent (2.26.921.11) started without errors on the same system and prefix.

From a +module,+loaddll,+file,+reg,+process trace: the agent loads its imports (libcurl, IPHLPAPI,
CRYPT32, bcrypt, WLDAP32, USERENV, MSWSOCK, …), finishes DLL initialization, and then shows the error
box almost immediately. Before that I could see no file, registry or network activity of its own, so it
seems to fail an internal startup check in the new build.

Reproduction

1. Install the NCSoft PURPLE launcher as a non-Steam game under Proton and let it update to 2.26.1019.7.
2. Start PURPLE; the "Initialization error 1" box appears.

Standalone reproduction in a clean prefix (no PURPLE running):

cd "<Purple>/2.26.1019.7/purple-agent"
WINEPREFIX=/tmp/clean-pfx "<Proton - Experimental>/files/bin/wine" ./purple-agent.exe -a Purple

-> same "Initialization error 1" box (trace:win:set_window_text L"Initialization error 1").

Workaround

Replace purple-agent.exe with a do-nothing executable that exits with code 0. PURPLE then works
without the popup. The real agent comes back with the next PURPLE update.

Attachments

• purple-agent-trace.log: +loaddll,+seh,+module,+file,+reg,+process trace of the agent (paths anonymized)
• proton-experimental-clean-prefix-win.log: +win trace, Proton Experimental, fresh prefix