System

CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K

GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3060

Driver: NVIDIA proprietary (tested via nvidia-smi)

OS: Kubuntu / KDE Plasma 6

Session: Wayland

Steam Runtime: Soldier

Filesystem: ext4 root + BTRFS Steam library (exec enabled)

Problem Summary

Dead Space 2 fails to launch on NVIDIA + Wayland.
The game window flashes or shows the EA logo briefly and then exits.
The game never reaches the main menu.

This occurs across:

Proton Experimental

GE-Proton 8.x

GE-Proton 10.x

DXVK

WineD3D

The crash occurs during Direct3D9 device creation.

From Proton logs:

dxvk: Failed to create D3D9 device
err:d3d9:Direct3DCreate9Ex Failed to initialize D3D9

The failure happens before PhysX or gameplay logic initializes.

What works

The game runs correctly on Steam Deck (AMD GPU, X11, Mesa)

The game progresses further under X11 on this system

The game consistently fails under Wayland on NVIDIA

This isolates the problem to NVIDIA + Wayland + DX9 swapchain / presentation

Filesystem validation

Initially Steam library was mounted with noexec:

/media/zhinchey/Storage 2 btrfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec

This was corrected in /etc/fstab:

UUID=1d0a7e81-a9bb-4c58-af62-037032c52ef5 /media/zhinchey/Storage\0402 btrfs nofail,users,exec 0 0

Then remounted:

sudo umount /media/zhinchey/Storage\ 2
sudo mount -a
findmnt /media/zhinchey/Storage\ 2

After this, Dead Space 2 got as far as the EA logo but still crashed.

Proton prefix reset
rm -rf ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/47780

Game was reinstalled and prefix rebuilt.

Proton logging

Enabled using:

PROTON_LOG=1 %command%

Log file produced:

~/steam-47780.log

DXVK disabled test

Tried forcing WineD3D:

PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 PROTON_LOG=1 %command%

Still crashed during device creation.

CPU-core limiting attempts

These were tested to rule out legacy engine thread bugs:

Simple core limit
taskset -c 0-7 %command%

Safe wrapper
bash -c 'PROTON_LOG=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 exec taskset -c 0-7 "$@"' bash %command%

Wine topology override (crashed Proton bootstrap)
WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY=8 taskset -c 0-7 %command%

None resolved the issue; crash still occurred during D3D9 device creation.

PhysX attempts
protontricks 47780 physx

PhysX installed but did not affect crash.

Vulkan shader cache did build

Steam Vulkan shader pre-compilation completed successfully, confirming Vulkan itself is functional.

Conclusion

Dead Space 2 fails to create a Direct3D9 device under NVIDIA Wayland.
Both DXVK (DX9 → Vulkan) and WineD3D (DX9 → OpenGL) fail, indicating the issue lies in NVIDIA’s Wayland WSI handling of legacy DX9 swapchains.

The same game works:

On AMD GPUs

On X11

On Steam Deck

But not on NVIDIA + Wayland.

Request

This appears to be a driver-level or WSI-level incompatibility with DX9 presentation models.
Please advise whether Proton/DXVK can work around this or if NVIDIA Wayland WSI must be fixed.

Attached: steam-47780.log (Higher number = older log)

steam-47780.log

steam-47780 (1).log
steam-47780 (2).log
steam-47780 (3).log
steam-47780 (4).log
steam-47780 (5).log
steam-47780 (6).log
steam-47780 (7).log
steam-47780 (8).log
steam-47780 (9).log