Its 4:03 am im going to sleep and will prob forget to look at this so idk im going crazy and got chatgpt to help me ahahahahahahahahah do i finish on an a or h?
Compatibility Report

Name of the game with compatibility issues: Rust

Steam AppID of the game: 252490

System Information

GPU: AMD RX 6600

Video driver version: Mesa 24.x (RADV)

Kernel version: 6.8 (Ubuntu 24.04)

Link to full system information report as [Gist](https://gist.github.com/): (will add shortly)

Proton version: Proton 9.0 (Beta) (also tested Proton Experimental and GE — GE fails entirely, Experimental crashes)

I confirm:

that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.

that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

Symptoms

Rust launches fine and gets to the main menu. When I try to join any server, I get this message:

Disconnected: EAC: anti-cheat client protection not active (NullClient)

The EAC bear logo appears briefly but seems to crash or hang before disappearing.
EAC logs show successful install, but something is clearly not hooking or staying active.
Steam is installed via the .deb package from Valve’s site (not Flatpak).
Tried clean prefix, full EAC install, correct launch options (PROTON_EAC_RUNTIME=1), and environment variables.
Still no success. Proton GE is outright incompatible, and Proton Experimental crashes Rust.
Proton 9.0 Beta loads into the menu but EAC never activates.

It’s 4AM and I just want to play Rust and sleep — please help! 🙏
Reproduction

Launch Rust using Proton 9.0 (Beta)

Make sure EAC is installed (done via EasyAntiCheat_Setup.exe inside the prefix)

Use launch options like:

PROTON_EAC_RUNTIME=1 %command%

Game launches to main menu

Attempt to join any server

Get kicked with NullClient error