Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date):

• • Steam Version: 1782437068
• • Steam Client Build Date: Thu, Jun 25, 2026 01:24 UTC -08:00
• • Steam Web Build Date: Fri, Jun 26, 2026 02:15 UTC -08:00

• Distribution: Arch Linux 7.0.13-zen1-1-zen, KDE Plasma 6.7.1, Wayland
• Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes (same results for stable)
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
• Steam Logs: steam-logs.tar.gz
• GPU: Intel Arc Pro B70, kernel driver xe

Additional relevant system information:

• xdg-desktop-portal 1.22.1-2
• xdg-desktop-portal-kde 6.7.1-1
• pipewire 1:1.6.7-1
• wireplumber 0.5.15-1

Portal backend service active: plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Steam Remote Play becomes unusable when Steam is started with the -pipewire option on KDE Plasma Wayland.

The video stream shows frequent flickering that looks like stale/wrong frames are inserted between correct frames. It does not look like normal network packet loss, image corruption, or a completely jumbled stream. It looks more like the stream sometimes displays an older frame or wrong previous frame between current frames.

Important A/B results on the same host, same client, same network, same desktop session, and same game/application:

steam without -pipewire + software encoding:
  works correctly

steam without -pipewire + hardware encoding:
  works correctly

steam -pipewire + software encoding:
  broken, stale/wrong frame insertion flicker

steam -pipewire + hardware encoding:
  broken, stale/wrong frame insertion flicker

So this does not appear to be specific to hardware encoding. The issue appears tied to Steam Remote Play’s -pipewire capture path.

I also tested OBS on the same KDE Wayland session with Screen Capture (PipeWire) as the source and FFmpeg VAAPI H.264 as the video encoder. OBS records the desktop correctly with no stale-frame insertion or flickering.

Describe what you expected should happen and what did happen. Please link any large code pastes as a Github Gist

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Start a KDE Plasma Wayland session on an Intel Arc Battlemage Linux host.
2. Start Steam with PipeWire capture enabled:

steam -pipewire

1. Start a Steam Remote Play stream from a client.
2. Enable the detailed performance overlay on the client if available.
3. Move the camera in a game or show other continuous motion on the host.
4. If the issue does not appear immediately, stop and restart the stream a few times. The issue is intermittent.
5. Observe that the client video sometimes flickers by inserting stale/wrong frames between correct frames.
6. Restart Steam without -pipewire and repeat the same test. The issue does not occur; both software and hardware encoding work correctly.