protonscr

Running steam with steam://run/367520 shows no window

steamopen
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#13043 · opened 2026-03-27 by WhyNotHugo · updated 2026-03-27 · 2 comments · github
WWhyNotHugo 2026-03-27 github

Is there an existing issue for this?

  • [x] I have searched the existing issues

Are you using any gamescope patches or a forked version of gamescope?

  • [x] The issue occurs on upstream gamescope without any modifications

Current Behavior

If I run gamescope -e steam steam://run/367520, no window renders (i.e.: not even gamescope), but after a while, I do hear music and ps auxf shows gamescope, steam and the game running.

Steps To Reproduce

Run gamescope -e steam steam://run/367520. The game launches but no window is shown.

Running gamescope -e steam or even gamescope -e steam steam://open/bigpicture and then executing the game manually works fine.

Hardware information

- Distro: Arch Linux rolling
- CPU: i7-13700K
- GPU: Navi 31 [Radeon RX 7900 XT]
- Driver Version: Mesa 26.0.3-arch1.1

Software information

- Desktop environment: swaywm
- Session type: wayland
- Gamescope version: 3.16.22-r0 (from Alpine packages)
- Gamescope launch command(s): `gamescope -W 3440 -H 1440 -e steam steam://run/367520`

Which gamescope backends have the issue you are reporting?

  • [x] Wayland (default for nested gamescope)
  • [ ] DRM (default for embedded gamescope, i.e. gamescope-session)
  • [ ] SDL
  • [ ] OpenVR

Logging, screenshots, or anything else

https://gist.github.com/WhyNotHugo/238b8dd9d8f0bbc8f5c3653c8ea7a8b4#file-nowin-log

WWhyNotHugo 2026-03-27 github

When launching a game via steam://run/..., Steam doesn't set the GAMESCOPECTRL_BASELAYER_APPID or GAMESCOPECTRL_BASELAYER_WINDOW on the root window.

When launching Steam and then launching a game manually via the UI, both of these are set:

> DISPLAY=:2 xprop -root GAMESCOPECTRL_BASELAYER_APPID GAMESCOPECTRL_BASELAYER_WINDOW
GAMESCOPECTRL_BASELAYER_APPID(CARDINAL) = 413091, 1368030, 769
GAMESCOPECTRL_BASELAYER_WINDOW(CARDINAL) = 0
WWhyNotHugo 2026-03-27 github

So I guess there's a bug in Steam (we can't fix that 😢), but I wonder if gamescope should fall back when no window is tagged, or if there's some possible workaround here.

Nothing extracted yet.