This is also occuring on the Stable Build for some reason. I have reimaged my Steam Deck a few days ago for other reasons and this one issue persists
The Shader Size doubles from the default value every time a game is started up. for both Non-Steam and Steam Games. Im gonna end up running out of storage if this isn’t fixed
Yeah, I noticed this issue too. Shader caches are stored in Steam/steamapps/shadercache.
When I launch a specific game for the first time, it creates cache files - for example, in the fozpipelinesv6 directory. It also creates another directory like this one: steamapprun_pipeline_cache.{some id}, and inside it, there's a file named something like steamapprun_pipeline_cache.{some id}.1.foz.
Okay, that’s fine - but every time I launch the game, it creates another .foz file, like steamapprun_pipeline_cache.{the id}.2.foz.
It just copies the content from the first one (or maybe the previous one, I’m not sure), but it doesn’t delete the old files. So if I run the game 10 times, I’ll have 10 .foz files. And one of them can be over 500 MB.
This feels like a serious bug. First of all, a new copy of the file shouldn’t be made each time. That’s just unnecessary writes - it’s gonna wear out our SSDs for no reason. Why not just use the first .foz file and update the cache directly instead?
I had to disable shader caching completely until this issue is fixed!
EDIT: Ohh, I found out this bug is 1+ year old... I can't believe it.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10486
Using the latest Steam Beta / Preview build on both Arch Linux and Steam Deck:
Shader Cache does not function properly at all. For both native Linux and Proton / Windows games.
Arch Linux PC specs: AMD Ryzen 7735HS, RTX 4060 8GB VRAM, 16GB RAM.
Steam Titles tested: Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Red Dead Redemption 2, Total War Warhammer.
Non-Steam: The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt
Shaders are in Steams "shadercache" folder by each steam app id of the tested titles
For Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: once shaders were built (mainly by running the benchmark then reloading the game) it would load quicker with no stutters the next time i launched then ran the benchmark. This is no longer the case, on the newest Steam version it has much slower loading and frequent stutters in the benchmark.
The Shader size also keeps growing each time i do it, the size has increased to 20GB for some reason
Same thing for AC Origins
For Red Dead Redemption 2: The game Pre-Compiles Shaders at launch. Which is about 3 Gigabytes max, however for some reason now it increases at every launch. ive launched it about 5 times and the size is now 15
On both PC and Steam Deck, i bought this title in 2022 for Steam Deck and it was always 3 Gigabytes without being raised
Total War Warhammer 3 has the same increasing shader size and stutter problems
Out of curiosity i tested a Non-Steam version of The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt on both and set its exe to run with Proton Experimental, runs poorly and has large shader sizes too.
This does not occur on Stable Builds, so im worried once all the beta changes make it to stable it this problem will make its way there