Your system information:

• Steam client version: 1781041600 (Jun 9 2026)
• Distribution: CachyOS Linux (Arch-based), rolling
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes, fully up to date
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, driver 610.43.02

Description:
Steam crashes on startup with a segfault in libaudio.so called from the PulseAudio
client thread. This is a regression of #9204.

Backtrace:
#0 libaudio.so + 0x4d942
#1 libpulse.so.0 + 0x215e8
#2 libpulsecommon-17.0.so + 0x3ed24
#3 pa_pdispatch_run (libpulsecommon-17.0.so)
#4 libpulse.so.0 + 0xf697

lib32-libpulse version: 17.0+r98+gb096704c0-1
PipeWire version: 1:1.6.6-1.1

Workaround: setting PULSE_SERVER=/dev/null prevents the crash but disables Steam UI audio.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Install Steam on Arch/CachyOS with lib32-libpulse 17.0+r98+gb096704c0-1
2. Run steam from terminal
3. Steam crashes before main UI appears