I managed to get past this issue by enabling the Steam overlay thanks a reply on Reddit.
Not sure how to requalify or close this bug. As far as I can remember it's the first time a game did require this option for me.

Edit: Patch for the game just dropped and after installing that it now gets past the crash point even with Steam Overlay disabled. Acknowledged in the changelog.

Hello,
I'm playing on Archlinux, but the video doesn't work (like the introduction cinematic).
I tried with proton hotfix and experimental, but no luck so far.

Maybe I just have to install a codec, but I cannot figure which one. Do you have any idea perchance? I had the same problem with Blue Prince recently btw.

Game starts fine on my end but sounds have a lot of stuttering.
Already had a stuttering fix on my pipewire-pulse.conf by changing pulse.min.quantum to 1024/4800 some months ago which fixed the same problem on other games, since then this is the first time getting problem.

If you are using an amd card you might need to use proton experimental for the game to render properly, as proton 9 shows a brightened main screen.

@Ealrann the game is using h264 videos yet isn't currently configured to unlock support for h264, this should be changed in the upcoming days, so the videos will start working automatically. People who have played other games requiring h264 support should already have working videos in this title. You can wait for the changes to go live steam side or you can unlock it yourself with steam steam://unlockh264/ on your terminal.

Thank you @simifor !! It worked

the game is using h264 videos yet isn't currently configured to unlock support for h264, this should be changed in the upcoming days

That's great to hear.

The game should now unlock h264 support on its own.

@EBertranDiaz I've played for a couple of hours without a single stutter, the problem with this kind of audio stutter is that they are very setup dependent. The better the cpu, the less demanding the game, and the bigger the audio buffer size (which you increase by increasing the minimum quantum), the lower the chance for this kind of stutter to appear. In my case the game is using 280/48000, and I have a 5700X3D.

I had no issues playing the game (steady 60 fps) until I entered Flying Water, after that I got huge lag spikes, with rendering issues (no walls, entities disappearing, etc) always before a cutscene or a fight. It always ends with my DE crashing.

I tried the game with proton experimental, stable latest, 9-27GE with no success.

I also tried using RADV as well as AMDVLK with no success either.

I did the same with linux kernels ranging from 6.14.1 to 6.15-rc3

I also tested Cinnamon and Hyprland DE just in case, both resulted in the same issue.

Specs for the logs:
CPU: i5-10400F
GPU: AMD Radeon 7800 XT
RAM: 32 GB
Kernel: 6.15-rc3
Driver: AMDVLK 2025.Q1.3-1
Proton: experimental-9.0-20250402c

System infos: https://gist.github.com/Estyms/86cc825809fd756417c8a4ff46a8d949
Log Gist: https://gist.github.com/Estyms/06fb1f03d9a90f0e321502bbbdc6810c

Update:
Using -dx11 the game works well

The game should now unlock h264 support on its own.

@EBertranDiaz I've played for a couple of hours without a single stutter, the problem with this kind of audio stutter is that they are very setup dependent. The better the cpu, the less demanding the game, and the bigger the audio buffer size (which you increase by increasing the minimum quantum), the lower the chance for this kind of stutter to appear. In my case the game is using 280/48000, and I have a 5700X3D.

I managed to fix this by changing default.clock.allowed-rates on pipewire.conf to look like this
default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 48000 ]

been playing for 24h now and found no more audio problems, now the only problem I have is the missed input bug or stuck inputs, but that is an Unreal Engine 5 problem since it also plagues windows users and other games like Oblivion remastered

Hi all,

The game crash consistently after 5-10 minutes of playing, I've tried Proton 9 / hotfix and experimental. I've tried deleting the compatdata folder, modifying the quality setting of the game, restarting the PC, changing Nvidia driver version, verifying game files and using -dx11 but to no avail.

This only happens with this game. I also play Path Of Exile 2 (Vulkan) / Split Fiction / Elden Ring all at max settings without any issues.

Could someone help me ? I'm pretty desperate...

System info : https://termbin.com/jhgo
Proton log : https://gist.github.com/Toucan4Life/353a77f74b19cc70758de6c413bc4880

@Estyms I haven't observed issues yet with flying waters, "M" has already joined the party where I am, as a reference and have gone through a number of fights. My testing has been on mesa 25.0.4, with proton experimental bleeding edge.

If your DE is crashing, and also going by your proton log, there's probably a related kernel log. You can check the kernel log of the current session with dmesg, and you can use journalctl to check previous boot sessions like so journalctl -k -b <num> where a number 0 would be the current session, -1 the previous session, and so on.

I too am having issues; during the first tutorial fight, I had a hard game crash (freezing with the music still playing but no response from my controller or keyboard) and then hard system crash (no system response and control alt function to switch to another tty also gave no sign of life) but with different specs, notably an Nvidia RTX GPU:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

GPU: Nvidia RTX 4090 (with the Nvidia open kernel modules)

Video driver version: 570.144-1

Kernel version: 6.14.4-arch1-1

Proton version: proton-9.0-4

I'm not sure where I can get a log of the game crash; if you need more information, I can try to give it.

@EBertranDiaz about audio stutters, and other who have it:

idk why - but audio freq for pipewire-pulse must be 256/48000 for this game, maybe other UE5 games also

if it any other - it will stutter, I had 512 - stutters - for testing I set 1024 - huge audio delays fully bugged audio

Fix:

copy:

mkdir -p ~/.config/pipewire && \
cp /usr/share/pipewire/*.conf ~/.config/pipewire && \
chown $USER ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf

open ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf

find and change to 256/48000:

pulse.properties = {....

    pulse.min.req          = 256/48000
    pulse.min.frag         = 256/48000
    pulse.min.quantum      = 256/48000

Then run:

systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

Hi,

@kisak-valve I removed my driver version (Nvidia 550) and switched to version 565 & 570, I still got the same issue. I also tried proton-GE to no avail. I can see these line in the output of dmesg

[ 1542.222580] NVRM: GPU at PCI:0000:06:00: GPU-20f852e5-61e9-dd82-7ce2-11d4885d7606
[ 1542.222586] NVRM: GPU Board Serial Number: 1321621094283
[ 1542.222587] NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:06:00): 69, pid=7243, name=GameThread, Class Error: ChId 0041, Class 0000c7c0, Offset 000001b0, Data 00000040, ErrorCode 0000000b

@cameronbosch to enable log:

• right-click your game on the steam library
• go to properties
• in the general tab, put this on the launch options PROTON_LOG=1 %command%
• you will see the log file steam-1903340.log in you home folder

@cameronbosch to enable log:

• right-click your game on the steam library
• go to properties
• in the general tab, put this on the launch options PROTON_LOG=1 %command%
• you will see the log file steam-1903340.log in you home folder

Thanks, I'll do this and try again later today and will post the log if the crash happens again.

@Toucan4Life Thanks for the report. Could you attempt to run the game with the latest r575 driver and Proton Experimental? That is what I have used for my initial testing and have not hit a GPU hang yet.

The game works fine on my AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, but I am seeing an issue with a shader in an early part of the game.

In the area with the first boss fight, there's supposed to be a faint red fog, with most of the area being dark. I'm seeing an extremely intense red fog that brightens the scene instead.

Comparison screenshots (I cropped the image, but the effect is quite obvious):

Correct:

Buggy:

This happened in the default Proton 9 as well as Proton Experimental. This log is from Experimental:

steam-1903340.log

@kisak-valve @esullivan-nvidia I found the issue, it was related to my RAM. I disabled the XMP profile and now everything run well. Thank you for your support guys

Sorry for creating a duplicate issue.

Just to update on my previous comment: I think whatever is happening affects just about every environment in the game. Another symptom of the issue is, because the effect isn't attenuating with distance as it should be, it's obvious when the game swaps from one environmental effect to another, as seen here: https://youtu.be/eDoUDnhupAI

Here's what it looks like when a PS5 player walks through that same threshold: https://youtu.be/QyS5AkSyiVI?t=424

You can see that both environments in my game are rendered totally wrong, and while the swap isn't completely seamless on PS5, it's not nearly as obvious.

Update: adding SteamDeck=0 to the launch options - and changing nothing else - completely fixed my issue. I was unable to get the issue to occur with SteamDeck=0, even after trying multiple combinations of different graphics settings.

Responding to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8626#issuecomment-2845812523 : @TheM1Stery I also asked this in the other thread - could you please retest this with Proton - Experimental? We believe we have a fix for the random controller disconnection 🤞

@alasky17 It works now. Thanks!

Not sure if this would deserve its own ticket but I will post it in here for now I guess:

I have the issue with Clair Obscur that when I try to launch it as is it will go until the screen where it explains the saving mechanism and then it will hang with a black screen. When adding -dx11 to the launch options the game will start but in-game all 3d elements will be low polygon version, i.e. flowers in the initial garden scene will be 4-sided polygons, the floating rocks above will be very basic shapes, etc. Another issue with using -dx11 is that the first few seconds of a cutscene will be just a red screen before the actual animation is visible.

• GPU: RTX 4070 Super
• Video driver version: 570.144
• Kernel version: 6.14.2-1
• Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/Juppstein/46fb66bd000cd67585b7923c455b5e45
• Proton version: Proton Experimental Hotfix

I have seen some others on the Steam forums that had the same issue and apparently this got introduced a short while ago with a game patch. I seems that this issue was not happening when the game was freshly released:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1903340/discussions/0/592896539385460718/

There is also someone on protondb with a similar issue:

https://www.protondb.com/app/1903340#vfmAuFnjXk

EDIT:
A workaround is to downgrade mesa to 25.0.x The recent 25.1.x versions will not allow the game to start successfully

I'm using the SteamDeck Oled with the latest 3.7.8 version of the OS, latest game version too, and the graphics menu is not working correctly:

• The advanced graphic options are not available. Contrary to the other Settings menus, it is impossible to scroll down in this list of options. I tested on Windows with a controller, and it is working fine.
• After having done some simple modifications in the graphic options (I could not point on which one), all the graphic options become not modifiable (edit, only moving in the menu with the controller without changing anything and then press B to exit without changing anything will exhibit this behavior)

I tried to add SteamDeck=0 to the launch options, but it did not change anything. Using Proton Experimental does not change anything too.

Not sure if this is related to proton but appears to be related to given the error message but latest Nvidia new feature branch driver (575.57.08 )causes this error on launch with the game. DX11 mode works without issue but then geometry in the game is not properly rendered.

I’m also seeing the same error as @SimpleHeuristics when launching on the latest Bazzite stable branch, which updated the nvidia driver from 570.153.02-1 to 575.57.08-1.

Same VK error on 575 drivers - worked fine on beta version. Very frustrating because I have one achievement to finish :(

Thanks for the reports about the crash with 575.57.08. We are looking into it and it is tracked in bug number 5317863.

I provide more information about

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8626#issuecomment-2938258593

Here my log, hope this helps to investigate something.

steam-1903340.log

So, CachyOS just bumped the driver version and I tried to repro this without success.

GPU: 4070 Ti
Video driver version: 575.57.08
Kernel version: 6.15.1-5-cachyos
Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/frozen-sea/abf37b041f660e7dc01f874cf5c5daeb
Proton version: proton-10.0-1f

steam-1903340.log

So, CachyOS just bumped the driver version and I tried to repro this without success.

GPU: 4070 Ti
Video driver version: 575.57.08
Kernel version: 6.15.1-5-cachyos
Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/frozen-sea/abf37b041f660e7dc01f874cf5c5daeb
Proton version: proton-10.0-1f

steam-1903340.log

Are you saying that it works under CachyOS?

Looks like most of the reports including mine come from a Blackwell GPU so maybe it's limited to that generation.

Are you saying that it works under CachyOS?

Looks like most of the reports including mine come from a Blackwell GPU so maybe it's limited to that generation.

Yeah, no sign of any issues at all here.

Hello @x5f3759df, warn:seh:handle_syscall_fault backtrace: --- Exception 0xc0000005 at 0x7fe2d5031f74: /usr/lib/pressure-vessel/overrides/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnvidia-gpucomp.so.575.57.08 + 0x831f74. in your Proton log hints towards a video driver issue.

More like it, because it works fine under 570

Thanks for the reports about the crash with 575.57.08. We are looking into it and it is tracked in bug number 5317863.

This has been resolved with 575.64!

I am getting poor performance when running this game on my system compared to my Windows install. I was expecting something like 10-20% FPS loss, but this is closer to 50%. On windows I get an average of 110 fps on Epic at 1440p with DLAA, but on Linux I'm getting an average of 55. I've tried several things, that yielded no results:

• Tried all Proton versions (including experimental and GE)
• Tried dkms and proprietary nvidia drivers
• Tried it without Steam overlay
• Running it with gamemode (the daemon)

This is very weird considering the platinum rating on protondb, and that other people have the same setup with way better results. Surely I am doing something wrong?

System Information

Kernel Version: 6.15.3-arch1-1
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4080-S
Drivers: nvidia-open 575.64-2, linux-firmware-nvidia 20250613.12fe085f-6
Proton version: Experimental

Logs

System Info: https://gist.github.com/AlexRD-42/20350836c63b5546e1cfd20d36f99e28
Runtime Diagnostics: https://gist.github.com/AlexRD-42/1cac82d5f57c52767c7f611a7f4f1aa1
Proton Log: https://gist.github.com/AlexRD-42/1e935f906ed0d090ce6da605600a75da
Additional logs: https://gist.github.com/AlexRD-42/fa8c0b6af7fd283d8559d0dcd5a2a255

@AlexRD-42 this is non-existent nvidia vk3d performance

This has been resolved with 575.64!

Can confirm, works again on 575.64

@x5f3759df Sorry can you elaborate? Does this mean you guys are running -dx11?

Latest batch of updates (kernel, nvidia driver, steam runtime) seems to have fixed this problem for me!

@x5f3759df Sorry can you elaborate? Does this mean you guys are running -dx11?

After recent NVIDIA driver update I can play again without any switch to DX11

So this can be closed? I have tested about 30 hours of playtime. No errors at all in nvidia with latest driver on Ubuntu 25.04.

Update: Almost level 70 on several characters. The only issue so far is that the game about 50% of the time does not detect the keys pressed immediately. On timed fights where parry or dodge or even jumping is needed you can easily fail the first timed press. The following ones will work fine.

To test if you have this issue go to the continent and open the map then try to move around the map by pressing the WASD keys. You should see the lag for the first or group of first keys. Then it will normalize itself and will move the map around with ease. Note that this issue is a game issue not a proton one.

Latest batch of updates (kernel, nvidia driver, steam runtime) seems to have fixed this problem for me!

Can you elaborate which versions you're using now and how different the performance is? Here I have Kernel 6.15.6, Nvidia drivers 575.64.03, any Proton version (usually using ProtonGE 10-9), RTX 5080. Performance on Linux is just like you described, half of what Windows gives me. Currently dual-botting and playing on Windows. Are you running dx11 or 12? How's the performance these days?

Latest batch of updates (kernel, nvidia driver, steam runtime) seems to have fixed this problem for me!

Can you elaborate which versions you're using now and how different the performance is? Here I have Kernel 6.15.6, Nvidia drivers 575.64.03, any Proton version (usually using ProtonGE 10-9), RTX 5080. Performance on Linux is just like you described, half of what Windows gives me. Currently dual-botting and playing on Windows. Are you running dx11 or 12? How's the performance these days?

Well actually, while it did improve it wasn't a major enhancement. It was more placebo because I was in a different area of the game. I'm running DX12, latest drivers like you, averaging like 90-100 FPS but it's not smooth. Just out of curiosity, did you start playing the game on Windows then switched? And what's your CPU? Maybe we can try to see what we have in common to root out a possible cause

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8626#issuecomment-3104312066

@AlexRD-42 I have two separate installations on Clair Obscur on Windows and Linux. Started both separately.

But I think the issue is pretty simple and is not related to Clair Obscur. DirectX 12 performance on Linux with Nvidia drivers is known to have a 20-30% regression compared to Windows. Nvidia is currently investigating the issue and maybe in a couple of months we'll see a partial fix.

Some sources: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/08/nvidia-are-working-on-a-general-optimization-for-vkd3d-directx12-games-on-linux/

Running the latest GOG version (v1.4.0, I think?) through Proton 9.0-4, 10.0-2 (beta) and Experimental

I have a Bazzite Linux machine with an NVIDIA RTX 3060, but this game doesn't exceed 5 FPS. I believe this is because the game is running through my integrated GPU, since GPU usage never exceeds 10%. Unfortunately, my motherboard has removed the option to disable integrated graphics, and integrated graphics don't show up in any commands, so I'm not sure what to do. Interestingly enough, the game does run through Wine 10.0 (albeit with no cinematics), so I'm really not sure what wires got crossed to have it stop working through Proton.

I have already tried the DRI_PRIME=1 command.

System Information

• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT
• Video driver version: amd mesa v: 25.2.6-cachyos1.2
• Kernel version: 6.17.6-2-cachyos (64-bit)
• Link to full system information report as Gist:https://gist.github.com/SuperBunChan/603fb1daa08ff10ddc94a89903f4a7ea
• Proton version: Proton Experimental

steam-1903340.log

Symptoms

After a couple of minutes of play time the game would hard crash and reboot my PC, no matter which version of proton I use. Non-unreal engine games work fine. The time between crashes varies.

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8626#issuecomment-3482701531

Just by chance can you do a memtester on your ram?

I say this because 2 other cases I recall it was the RAM and the CPU. But for you test the ram. Even try to test other heavy games to see what happens.

@luisalvarado The memtest passed. This seems to only happen with some Unreal 5 games.

Thank you. So it would in the family of this group https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues?q=is%3Aissue state%3Aopen ue5

One more for that bucket list

Haven't played in a few months, started it back up today and seeing the game hang on the "Warning" screen. Ubuntu 24.04, 2080, amd64, 1920x1080 single-monitor setup. Seems this is a common problem.

Basically, game hangs at the Warning screen and the rest of the system becomes very sluggish. No warnings in the kernel log. While poking around, I noticed something odd. The game REALLY doesn't like to be in the foreground while fullscreened. If I press alt-tab (then hold Alt for multiple seconds, until the window switcher finally appears) and force a terminal to appear overtop of the (full-screened) game, the game will immediately un-hang and resume rendering. Minimizing the terminal (and bringing the game to the foreground) hangs it again. Normally I play Fullscreen, but Borderless Windowed has the same problem. However, the problem does not occur in windowed mode, and using the alt-tab+terminal hack to limp to the settings screen allows me to switch to Windowed and run normally. I'm not a graphics guy by any means, so unsure what APIs would be involved here, but hopefully this helps.

After a couple of minutes of play time the game would hard crash and reboot my PC

@SuperBunChan sound like typical amd ring timeout

update everything to latest - kernel etc
if still freeze/rebooot - run in terminal after reboot after freeze

sudo journalctl -b -1 -o cat --no-pager | grep "amdgpu: ring gfx"

is there ring timeout?

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/?sort=created_date&state=opened&search=ring timeout

you can try instruction in
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/14250#note_3181015

Now that this has won Game of the Year, could Valve consider looking into fixing the 100%-reproducible hang at the warning/title screen on vanilla Ubuntu 24.04 LTS + nvidia? Yes, it runs in windowed mode but performance is horrific as a result.

It looks like the problem happens if "Force Composition Pipeline" is enabled in nvidia-settings. Disabling this option, or alt-tabbing a different window into the "foreground" allows the game to run in full-screen mode.

Getting crashes on cut scenes with DX12, fixed by lowering shading to Medium.

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Clair Obscur Expedition 33
• Steam AppID of the game:1903340

System Information

• GPU: RX 9070 XT
• Video driver version: 25.3.2-2
• Kernel version: 6.17.13+deb14-amd64
• Link to full system information report as Gist:
• Proton version: Proton Hotfix (hotfix-20251031)

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

When using a keyboard layout not using QWERTY, in my case I use AZERTY french keyboard layout, the game doesn't recognized it correctly and think my keyboard is QWERTY.
This makes the shortcuts to mode in menu annoying as they can't be rebound.

The workaround is to set the global system keyboard layout to QWERTY, for example using setxkbmap us.
Or better :

• Set the global X11 layout to US (QWERTY)
• Add the main layout as an additional layout (for me, AZERTY FR layout).

In KDE, this look like this:

With this setup, the game correctly recognized the keyboard as AZERTY and the keys are correctly mapped by default.
But this is not a easy setup and might not be possible to setup without KDE.

Reproduction

Set a non-QWERTY layout, for example in X11 using setxkbmap fr
The game unexpectely use Q and E to navigate in the parameters menus.

Here is the the logs with this command line: PROTON_LOG=1 WINEDEBUG=keyboard,x11drv gamemoderun %command%:

steam-1903340_kb_fr.log

Expected

Set a non-QWERTY layout, for example in X11 using setxkbmap fr
Run the game and go to parameters / settings menu, we should see these key mapping (a key mapping resize is needed to refresh them):

This can be produced using the "2 keyboards layout" workaround explained above (US as primary and FR as secondary).
In this case here is the log output:

steam-1903340_kb_en.log

Analysis

I think the issue is that ActivateKeyboardLayout is not implemented in Wine, so the keyboard layout is still FR when the game try to change it to English:

0164:fixme:keyboard:X11DRV_ActivateKeyboardLayout 0x4090409, 0000: semi-stub!

Then, the game handle the mapping by itself, but keys are already translated to AZERTY by the system as the ActivateKeyboardLayout function did nothing.

The main differences between running the game with US or FR layout is the return values of MapVirtualKeyEx(), with US it uses the QWERTY layout, with FR it uses the AZERTY layout despite ActivateKeyboardLayout() called by the game as it is not implemented in Wine.

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8626#issuecomment-3700852573

I reinstall the game and cachyos and it run without issue. Idk why i got these bug but now it's fine.

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Steam AppID of the game: 1903340

System Information

• GPU: RTX 5070 Ti
• Video driver version: nvidia 590.48.01
• Kernel version: 6.19.9
• Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/c-ostwald/69eb885292cafa0479ad11938b696ab8
• Proton version: Proton Experimental, GE-Proton 10-31+

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.

steam-1903340.zip

Symptoms

There is a regression in Proton Experimental. The game launches with Proton 10.0-4 but not with Proton Experimental. It freezes before reaching the Warning screen.
Same issue with GE-Proton, the latest working version is GE-Proton 10-30 from Feb 10.
Issue occurs with XWayland and native Wine Wayland.

Reproduction

Switch to Proton Experimental and launch the game without any launch options.

@kisak-valve I added the log to my original comment. I had to cut the end of it because of Github upload size restrictions. But it seems to loop anyways.
Additionally, I usually see at least a window opening but with PROTON_LOG=1 no window is opening at all. Maybe I was too impatient, but if I would wait longer the size of the file becomes too large.

Update: Reproduced with Bazzite (Fedora-based, GNOME-Gamescope) on the same hardware – audio works there. Then installed GNOME parallel to Cosmic on my Fedora 44 system, logged into GNOME session, audio works under the exact same PipeWire/WirePlumber configuration. Issue is reproducible only under Cosmic Desktop. Likely a Cosmic-specific bug rather than a Proton/FAudio issue. Will file a separate bug at the Cosmic project. Closing this on my end – feel free to close the issue if you agree.