R.U.S.E
This does not appear to use .NET.
@madewokherd, is that based on testing or from reading the log?
Looks like the log indicates nvapi.dll related trouble.
This is from testing. If mscoree is builtin, and the mscoree debug channel is enabled, anything using .NET will log some mscoree lines.
Nvapi is an nvidia API not related to .NET.
The behavior of this game may have improved with Proton 3.16-4 and newer from faking an AMD card to avoid nvapi, it would be nice to get a Proton log with a newer Proton version.
My point in mentioning nvapi was just that the game may not have gotten far enough into starting up to have hit the other frameworks mentioned in the opening post.
That could still be the case. It crashed in startup in my testing, but I didn't find an obvious cause.
On my current Manjaro installation I don't even get the splash screen (even on older versions of Proton).
Tested on 4.2-3.
65074.434:0008:000f:err:winediag:nodrv_CreateWindow Application tried to create a window, but no driver could be loaded. 65074.434:0008:000f:err:winediag:nodrv_CreateWindow The explorer process failed to start.
Are you able to run other games in Proton?
Other games run fine for me (Sekiro, Dark Souls III, Conan Exiles etc).
This works fine with current "Proton Experimental" as distributed by Steam 1623850434 experimental-6.3-20210616
The only issue I get now is a WMV error
After clinking Ok, no intro video is played, and videos ingame are disabled as is the video background of the main menu, but the game works otherwise
R.U.S.E. support
Issue transferred from https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6021.
@Lamera posted on 2022-07-22T00:23:08:
Hello there
I try to run ruse on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with Steam Proton experimental.
However I get this critical error on start:
The following error appears after clicking on ok:
Version : Final
UNKNOWN_EXCEPTION (Probably C++)
RaiseException (0)
RaiseException (0)
_wctype (0)
(0)
(0)
BaseThreadInitThunk (0)
RtlUserThreadStart (0)
RtlCreateUserThread (0)
Core dumped in C:\users\\steamuser\\Temp\\000099_Ruse Final_29.dmp for post-mortem analysis.
The call stack was copied to the clipboard.
Press OK to report the dump by mail, CANCEL to quit.
Are there any options I can try to make it work?
Hello @Lamera, please add PROTON_LOG=1 %command% to the game's launch options and attach the generated $HOME/steam-$APPID.log to this issue report as a file. (Proton logs compress well if needed.) Also, please copy your system information from Steam (Steam -> Help -> System Information) and put it in a gist, then include a link to the gist in this issue report.
Hi @kisak-valve !
Thank you for looking into this issue. Below you find the crash log:
steam-21970.log
I used Proton Experimental in this crash log.
My system information: https://gist.github.com/Lamera/24fca30a765bfbae42815e94f06c029f
Let me know, if I can test something.
Thanks, looking at your system information, the NVIDIA driver install is not healthy (https://gist.github.com/Lamera/24fca30a765bfbae42815e94f06c029f#file-system_info_steam-L48. Further down there are hints that you have part of the NVIDIA 470 series proprietary driver installed, but everything is either broken or falling back to mesa/llvmpipe to render on your CPU. I haven't seen this particular pattern before, so I can't give clear instructions beyond recommending a reinstall of the NVIDIA proprietary driver.
Oh yes! Didn't realize that. And there's also a new driver version. I updated my NVIDIA driver and rebooted my system. Restart the game and ... I can see now game content, but it freezes before the menu appears. Oh, and the background is green instead of a video/image. Strange:
Here's the new log:
steam-21970.log
R.U.S.E freezes during loading screen, no crash
Issue transferred from https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/7593.
@maximepires4 posted on 2024-03-22T16:03:22:
Compatibility Report
- Name of the game with compatibility issues: R.U.S.E
- Steam AppID of the game: 21970
System Information
- GPU: RTX 3060 TI LHR
- Video driver version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 550.54.14
- Kernel version: 6.6.10-76060610-generic
- Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/maximepires4/ef770aa71f5f6f8ddd77de8079687712
- Proton version: 1710431022 proton-9.0-beta15
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 will launch but freeze during the loading screen.
Reproduction
Install and launch the game.
Hi ! i'm bumping this issue as i've the same problem as @maximepires4 , but this seems to be rather unrelated to proton as i know this game worked before. Something to do with a system library? Log attached, of no interest im afraid.
Something to note is, while the game is frozen, a thread is maxed.
Ive tried serveral disable fsync, esync to no avail.
@kisak-valve I was able to play the game. Even multiplayer works very well.
I'm using Ubuntu 25.10, Nvidia GeForce GTX 980Ti with 580.126.09.
You need to select Proton 7 or Proton 8 and paste those start options:
PROTON_NO_XIM=1 GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=0 VK_LAYER_PATH=/dev/null PROTON_USE_DXVK=1 %command%
Unfortunately it doesn't run on newer Proton versions. Will this be addressed in a future release?
UPDATE: I found out that the game in the first mission at the campaign crashes.
PROTON_NO_XIM=1 GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=0 VK_LAYER_PATH=/dev/null PROTON_USE_DXVK=1 %command% -nointro -skipmovies
Thank you!!! I'll document this on ProtonDB!
Hey, I have the same problem where the game freezes shortly after start (for proton 9 and newer).
Unfortunately for me the workaround @Lamera mentioned did not work.
When trying the start options with proton 8 or 7 (or 6) I get a window with a title that seems to say "Schwerer Fehler" ("critical error") and the text "No SteamClient021". See screenshot:
I'm not sure what else I could try and would greatly appreciate any help I can get. Here is a log (created with proton 8.0-5 and the above mentioned start options):
And here is a gist with my system information (hopefully it being in German is ok?): https://gist.github.com/Ticmea/f7c73b038cce542e3063e7e81c964351
Same as Ticmea here ! And I guess it should be official as it's an officially supported title on steam deck.
The game now works flawlessly
Since the re-release on steam, you don't need any tweaks to play the game.
Just run it without forcing any compatibility tool, the default proton is fine.
If you have issues with the fullscreen, try using proton-ge.
@maximepires4 The reason I landed here in the first place is precisely because that did not work for me.
I only bought the game due to the re-release (was too expensive beforehand due to having short supply). Unfortunately the default settings produced a freeze like 5 seconds after launch. So I went to protondb which lead me here and I tried the things recommended here. As I have said, this produced the error window described in my other comment.
I believe I may still be able to play the game if I boot into Windows, but that is of course not ideal and I would much, much rather play it on my main OS like all my other games.
@Ticmea sorry for that, I rushed to my conclusion since i've been trying to run this game for years.
First of all, the game didn't work for me with older versions of proton, like 7 and 8. So this seems to be a dead end.
Try using proton-ge, I'd recommend ProtonUpQt to install newest versions of proton-ge.
Maybe give us a log using newer versions of proton or proton-ge ? And let's see what we can do from here.
It will definitely work on windows, but as you said this isn't what we're looking for.
@maximepires4 I tried the older versions and startup options after the defaults failed because here and on ProtonDB it was described as a working solution, but yeah it seems that's no longer the case at least for some users.
Thank you very much for the suggestions! I'll look into them as soon as I can and report back. Hopefully I'll find the time to do it sometime this weekend.
@Ticmea I don't know if this is going to be of any help, but I've read across the internet that the error "No SteamClient021" is caused by a call to an outdated steam api. You can check on steam, Help -> About Steam -> Steam API Version. For me it is "SteamClient023". Maybe older proton versions try to use an outdated version of the steam api. (I also had the error No SteamClient021 when trying to run the game with old proton versions)
@maximepires4 I managed to find the time for a couple of tests today. In case it's relevant, here is how I performed these tests:
- Launch the game with the settings I wanted to test
- Wait around 15 seconds for the Loading screen to show up
- The game freezes almost immeadiately upon entering the loading screen (loading animation stops; steam overlay does not work anymore; the Game seems to keep a single CPU core at 100%, seemingly not doing anything with it)
- The OS eventually tells me the program is not responding (I always waited for this to happen)
- I use steam to forcefully quit the game
I noticed that Steam downloaded an update for RUSE (or possibly proton? Not sure but it listed RUSE in the downloads at least), I wanted to try completely vanilla settings. So I did but I ran into the same problem (freeze during initial loading screen). So I made a second attempt where I only added PROTON_LOG=1 to the launch options and everything turned out the same. Here is the log file from that attempt, it appears to have been using proton experimental-11.0-20260506b (I didn't force a particular version, just gathered as much from the logfile):
Next I wanted to use the newest proton version to see if that made a difference, so in addition to enabling logs in the launch options I forced proton hotfix (which I assumed to be newer than experimental?). From the logs the exact version appears to be "hotfix-20260429-cd-hd2". Here is the log for this attempt:
During this attempt I also made a screenshot of the CPU usage graph in my system monitor which shows that at first there is normal CPU load but exactly when the freeze happens, the Game seems to only be using one core at a time but max that core out completely (I assume the OS is making it juggle cores to balance the load somewhat. I can also hear the fans of my PC spinning up after the freeze, presumably due to the maxed core):
And finally I also tried downloading the newest GE-Proton via ProtonUpQt as you suggested. So I installed GE-Proton10-34, selected that in compatibility and ran into the same problem. Here is the log file for that:
CPU usage also looked pretty much the same:
I think you are correct about the older versions using an outdated Steam API version. At least mine also reads "SteamClient023".
Thanks again for your help, hopefully there is something usable in the logs. I tried to look into them a little as well, but unfortunately I didn't understand too much as this isn't exactly my forte.
@Ticmea I launched my game with the logging argument, and I can confirm that the default proton version used is proton hotfix, exactly the same as yours in the second file.
The only difference between our setups is that i'm using gamescope with the following launch options: gamescope -f -W 1920 -H 1080 -- %command%.
I think you might want to try gamescope, especially since you seem to have a custom resolution on one of your screens.
However, the gamescope package is not currently available on Ubuntu 24.04, so you'll need to build it yourself. You can refer to this link, which I used to install the package. Just a quick tip: don't forget to run git submodule update --init before the meson command. This step is mentioned in the gamescope build instructions but is missing from that Gist, I don't know why.
I was able to launch the game using game mode instead of desktop in Bazzite.
So definitely a compositor issue.
@maximepires4 Sorry for the late reply, but I was very busy. Today I finally managed to set some time aside to try gamescope.
I did have to reset to an earlier commit like some comments on that gist mentioned but I was eventually able to build and install it. At first using it was causing the game not to launch at all for some reason. After 2 restarts though (just one wasn't enough somehow? idk, don't ask me) it did eventually seem alright.
I was able to play the tutorial and that was working perfectly. So then I decided to play a quick online match (just to test if that is working), expecting to get curbstomped immediately when I entered a 4 player ffa with all 3 other players at level 100.
Thankfully I was left alone long enough to enter the endgame but due to my inexperience I was unable to actually mount much of a defence when eventually I was pushed (60+ minutes in).
Up until that point everything was working 100% as expected. But when I eventually got so desperate that I decided to just send everything I had into the field, it appeared to be working shockingly well (I was fully expecting to be defeated within the next 3 minutes). Eventually I noticed that the enemies (who did chat with me until like 2 minutes before I noticed anything odd) were completely silent and gave no orders to any of their troops (which is why my attack was working).
So I managed to kick the player I was fighting out (destroyed his last HQ) but then noticed that actually the player opposite to me began moving some troops again. So I sent my army to fight them but after about a minute of an even-matched fight, he suddenly capitulated when the fight was far from over. The third player was also not moving any troops and I was able to win the game essentially for free. I even received the achievement for beating a dev (or a player who did) and I received an insane amount of exp too (I reached level 59 from just one match, surely that's not normal right?).
It really seemed strange to me, like surely they wouldn't all abandon the game at the same time? I thought maybe I got a disconnect, but I didn't notice any connection difficulty messages about myself (although there was one for the player who eventually capitulated in the even fight) and the game played like normal for me.
So yeah I'm explaining all of this because I'm not sure if that was:
a. the game working as intended and everyone just essentially let me win (or I got disconnected without me noticing and that's how the game deals with that)?
b. the game encountering some kind of bug and this is just how it behaves then?
or c. something about this setup with linux proton and gamescope that caused this behaviour?
What do you think?
In any case the game appears to be running normal for the most part. Huge Thanks for your help!!! :)
Proton versions
proton hotfixx2 2026-05proton experimentalx4 2026-05ge-proton10-34x1 2026-05proton 8.0-5x1 2026-05proton 9.0x1 2024-03proton 3.16-4x1 2019-04proton 3.7x1 2018-09
Launch options
PROTON_LOG=1x2 2026-05PROTON_NO_XIM=1x2 2026-03PROTON_USE_DXVK=1x2 2026-03
Launch lines
gamescope -f -W 1920 -H 1080 -- %command%x1 2026-05PROTON_NO_XIM=1 GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=0 VK_LAYER_PATH=/dev/null PROTON_USE_DXVK=1 %command% -nointro -skipmoviesx1 2026-03PROTON_NO_XIM=1 GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=0 VK_LAYER_PATH=/dev/null PROTON_USE_DXVK=1 %command%x1 2026-03
Upstream links
- ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/7593x1 2024-03
- ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6021x1 2022-07
DLLs
nvapi.dllx1 2019-04
Compatibility Report
System Information
I confirm:
steam-21970.log
Symptoms
When launching this game, the R.U.S.E splash will appear and you get an error message about wine crashing. It will stay there until you force close it. After looking through the games AppDB, it turns out you need a number of things including dotnet2.0 and wmp10, but Proton doesn't yet support 32-bit prefixes (#449). I had attempted a workaround for that, which attempts to create a 32-bit prefix for Proton 3.7 but unfortunately the installation of dotnet etc all failed with a number of other errors.
It should also be noted that this game is no longer available for purchase on the Steam store due to licensing issues, but a large number of people own the game.