Game Screen Flickering and Desktop Freeze with proton experimental

protonclosed

ValveSoftware/Proton#9117 · opened 2025-10-19 by cataldoc · updated 2025-10-20 · 1 comments · github

Ccataldoc 2025-10-19 github

Compatibility Report

Name of the game with compatibility issues: World of Warcraft

System Information

GPU: RX 580
Video driver version: Mesa 25.2.5
Kernel version: 6.17.3-3
Link to full system information report as [Gist]: https://gist.github.com/cataldoc/8b3ef60120c8d76d5c6f88ff088715d5
Proton version: experimental-10.0-20251017

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 launching World of Warcraft with the latest proton-experimental the game window opens but immediately causes severe screen flickering across the entire desktop. KDE Plasma becomes completely unresponsive, requiring the game process to be killed from a terminal to regain control of the system.

Video of the issue: https://files.catbox.moe/mmgker.MOV

Affected Versions

All proton-experimental 10.0-20251017

Launch Parameters

PROTON_USE_NTSYNC=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1

Reproduction

Launch World of Warcraft using any proton-experimental version from either Lutris or Steam

Apply the launch parameters listed above

Game window opens → entire desktop begins flickering → KDE becomes unresponsive

logs from proton-experimental: https://gist.github.com/cataldoc/7aae752c238d2c8cc45c6aab6d36e04e

Platforms Tested

Lutris: Issue occurs

Steam: Issue occurs

Kkisak-valve maintainer 2025-10-20 github

Hello @cataldoc, we're using one issue report per unofficially supported game title, so I've gone ahead and transferred this issue report to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8760#issuecomment-3420073899.