I'm finding the same issue.

Both Host and Deck are using the Steam beta branch. I've tried with The Evil Withing and Final Fantasy XVI, with both the Deck is getting a black screen while sound and input work

PD: My Host is Arch Linux

I'm having a similar but slightly different issue. When I try to stream from steam on manjaro to another client, the steam client on the server crashes. The game sometimes launches and stays running but the steam client restarts, and streaming does not succeed. Here's my specs:

    ~  neofetch                                                                                                      ✔ 
██████████████████  ████████   
██████████████████  ████████   -------------- 
██████████████████  ████████   OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64 
██████████████████  ████████   Host: B550 Phantom Gaming 4 
████████            ████████   Kernel: 6.10.13-3-MANJARO 
████████  ████████  ████████   Uptime: 47 mins 
████████  ████████  ████████   Packages: 1216 (pacman) 
████████  ████████  ████████   Shell: bash 5.2.37 
████████  ████████  ████████   Resolution: 2560x1080 
████████  ████████  ████████   DE: Plasma 6.1.5 
████████  ████████  ████████   WM: kwin 
████████  ████████  ████████   Theme: Breeze [GTK2/3] 
████████  ████████  ████████   Icons: breeze [GTK2/3] 
████████  ████████  ████████   Terminal: konsole 
                               CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (32) @ 3.400GHz 
                               GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER 
                               Memory: 5171MiB / 15909MiB 

See also: https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/6171701036702779895/?ctp=2

Ok, i tested a few things.
Streaming with Big Picture Mode from my host to an Android tablet with Steam Link is possible (Big Picture Mode is very laggy - but i found some other post describing this already), but when i launch a game directly via Steam Link on my host system, i get the exact same behavior on my tablet like i experience it with the deck. Only sound but no video.

EDIT: i booted up my windows partition to test this also with windows as a host system -> here it is working to Stream to my Steam Deck

I found the experience much more stable / usable with a Ubuntu 22.04 host if you start the game on the host first, get through the loading screens into an interactive menu in the game, then connect to the running game rather than starting it from the Deck.

I know it's a workaround and is only useful if you're near your host but might help if you're using it for local streaming as I am.

I suspect it might be something to do with window focus grabbing on the host but pure speculation

*Edit for additional thought:
To make this usable generally I think running a VNC server on boot on the host and installing a VNC client + game shortcut on the deck would resolve the issue entirely - if a game doesn't start properly from the deck, just load up the VNC on the Deck, start it, then connect to the running game.

This happens to me on manjaro,nvidia 4090,x11, KDE plasma host machine. Since the sept 17th steam stable update.

It did not happen as a result of a system update.

I was steaming in my living room from my office PC. The steam client updated, and I have not used my livingroom since sept 17th lol.

This is after another long muti week breakage of remote play. And the fix only lasted about a month or so.

So I have not been able to game in my living room for 2 of the past 3 months more or less.

On oct 2nd, the beta client got an update that made remote play work. When they re-released the update to include steam deck remote play fixes, it broke. So it did work for a few hours at least, unfortunately I was too busy to game in my living room for those few hours I was able to stream.

Was this ever fixed? I think I'm hitting the same issue.

Weird thing, this is hapenning with some games only? For exaple I get it to work with Kingdom Come Deliverance, but not with Black Myth Wukong (Strill black screen on the TV, if enabled the Remote Play stats, on the source encoder it says something about a black box)

I've been running into this exact same issue on Linux with a Steam Deck as well. Same issue is present in both Fedora 41 and Ubuntu 24.04.1. Remote play settings do not seem to matter, however I did notice the video sometimes working when booting the game into fullscreen. This however would not use the whole screen of the Deck.

When not fullscreen the SD will sometimes mention network traffic problems, this however can not be the case, because it will only do that when the window focus of the host is on the game and not a browser for example (Sometime glitches out and shows whole desktop, which streams fine.)

Steam Deck is on Stable.

Worth noting that when the host is Windows (same pc) streaming works fine, regardless of Remote Play settings.

I also get a black screen with sound and cursor on Arch but this only happens on Wayland and not on X11.

This problem is still persisting. I have been running Fedora 41 KDE spin, and sometimes I get the streaming to my Steam Link hardware to work on the TV, sometimes........ Most of the time I can't get the video stream to show up on my Steam Deck OLED. Audio and input seem to be working, just not video. No amount of tinkering with Client/Host options matters. Also, getting a pop-up on the KDE desktop for "input access" confirmation, which completely stops any inputs from working. I have given many games access manually to pass inputs through to the desktop, but KDE/Fedora doesn't remember my choice every time and it will pop up again and prevent inputs, along with no video being streamed to any Client device. I find Steam Remote Play the most frustratingly flaky thing that I have ever dealt with in the Linux space thus far, and it is insanely frustrating.

Encountering the same issue. This seems like a Wayland specific issue since streaming works if I start KDE Plasma in x11.

I have the same issue as well running Wayland on the host PC.

Host: Pop!_OS (24.04)

• GPU: AMD 7900XT
• CPU: AMD 5800X3D

Clients: All exhibiting the same bug

• Raspberry Pi 5, Raspbian Bullseye, running Steam Link
• Framework Laptop 13, Ubuntu 24.04

Just wanted to come back here to report that streaming to my Steam Link from my Fedora 41 KDE spin is now working flawlessly and as good as it does on my windows partition. I believe the last Steam client update may have solved the problems that I was having with the black screen issues.

I also wanted to chime in and say that I've had no issues streaming for a couple weeks now. This is from my manjaro host to a android TV (nv shield) client.

Chiming in a second time after I read the previous two responses from @MakinToast and @green3g. It looks like I'm able to get streaming working from my Linux/Wayland host more than 50% of the time when I use the -pipewire flag.

Unfortunately, I am still having a few issues and I haven't yet determined if there is a pattern to them.

Games tested:

• Star Wars Battlefront 2017 seems to work just fine running with Proton GE-9.16, however I ran into issues with the EA launcher once (why do they insist on their terrible launcher in the first place?)
• Skyrim SE does not work at all once I get past the launcher
• Doom Eternal works perfectly
• Ori and the Blind Forest works perfectly

Note:

• Closing a game and launching a new game occasionally causes problems, though this is /usually/ fixed by stopping the stream and reconnecting
• If I do not use the -pipewire flag, then my streaming client cannot stream video. It will however receive an audio stream and send controller inputs.

I think I'm having a similar issue...

Both PC's are running ubuntu 24.04, and are on a local network (wired). Trying to stream BG3 (if it matters).

When I do get it working, it seems to have an issue where the steam remote control can't be more than a few feet away before it disconnects, and the network is extremely laggy. I turned on the advanced diagnostics, and just saw a packet loss of like 90-something percent, before the thing crashed and burned. (and I only got a few frames of actual gameplay).

Steam remote play worked flawlessly last year when I went on vacation, thousands of miles away, last year... though, back then my host was Windows... I'm not really sure what changed beyond that...

Just figured I'd try to get some couch play in, but things seem to not be happy.

Issues here on LMDE

Weird thing is I run LMDE on my laptop. After encounter this issue with my main Host (ubuntu) I tried running fallout 3 from the laptop and stream to Windows desktop with a controller and everything worked fine. After assuming it was an ubuntu bug I merged over to mint and tried to start a game... No luck with controller inputs. I know not quite a steam deck but similar situation

I do still have this issue.
But like someone also mentioned, some games work and others do not.
For example: Hogwarts Legacy is working but Witcher 3 only plays the sound.
Is there any planned solution or workaround?
When starting a game on my host and connecting after being in the menu won't also work. Same behavior as starting the game remotely via the Deck.

I don't know about other games, but I think for me, I may have been having two different issues...

1. My bluetooth card is a potato under linux. It's just hot garbage... the drivers are terrible, and there isn't really much of an option to fix it, other than getting a new card... (I've since purchased a usb-bt dongle from my local electronics retailer).

B) BG3 works fine on the host, but for remote play, something is weird with performance. Before, I had been running it via lutris, but using remote play it runs through steam. Lutris adds "gamemoderun" to the command line before launching the game, so I gave that setting a try with steam, and I believe it helped. I don't have actual numbers to back this up, unfortunately but it might be worth a shot if you are experiencing issues.

I'm having the same problem (a black screen on the client) with Ubuntu 24.04.3 streaming from a Steam Deck. It doesn't happen if I switch to using X11 instead of Wayland, but I see a lot of FPS drops/artifacts when it is working (and Moonlight/Sunshine is pretty much flawless) so haven't continued investigating any further.

Hi, I ran into the same issue and I can consistently reproduce it on my setup.

System configuration:

Host: Linux Mint 22.2 (X11, Cinnamon desktop)
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090 + Intel AlderLake-S integrated iGPU
NVIDIA driver: 580.95.05
Client: Steam Deck (latest stable firmware)

Observed behavior:

First Remote Play session works perfectly (game video + audio stream fine).

After closing the first session, I continue to use the Linux Mint host normally — browsing, video, other games, etc. No system updates or config changes are made.

When I start a second Remote Play session from Steam Deck — the host runs the game normally and shows full video locally, but the Deck receives a black screen (audio still OK).

Restarting the game does not help.
Restarting Steam Deck does not help.

After restarting Steam — Remote Play works normally again.
pkill -9 steam
pkill -9 steamwebhelper
pkill -9 gamescope
steam &

No GPU errors appear in kernel logs (dmesg) or nvidia-smi
No encoder-related errors appear in the Steam logs within a 15-minute window around the failure
The game runs fine locally on the host even while the Deck sees black video