Hello @witchlliee, my understanding is that the current intended experience for the Steam client running in Steam Deck game mode is to prefer the Steam Deck verification configuration unless it's been overridden in the per-game properties. If your distro is choosing to impose that on you, that's a distro packaging issue, not a Steam client issue. The Steam client running in desktop mode should not impose that on you.
Hello @witchlliee, my understanding is that the current intended experience for the Steam client running in Steam Deck game mode is to prefer the Steam Deck verification configuration unless it's been overridden in the per-game properties. If your distro is choosing to impose that on you, that's a distro packaging issue, not a Steam client issue. The Steam client running in desktop mode should not impose that on you.
I don't think this is a packaging issue. The same happens in all distros I tried so far. Please can you take a look on this? There a bunch of people who can report you the same behavior. Reproducing is easy, just use any proton as global default, and launch PoE2 (Path of Exile 2) for example, the game will default to Proton Experimental. This is very annoying since I don't normally use valve's proton.
I also have this issue on CachyOS with both the arch package and the flatpak version. I set a default compatibility tool but some games still show "Proton (version) selected by Valve Testing". I wish there was an option to override the default Proton on every game, instead of having to configure a custom Proton version individually.
Examples of games that do this override: Red Dead Redemption 2 and Mirror's Edge Catalyst. They both override to Experimental. I'm sure there's a lot more in my library but I have manually chosen a proton version for them already.
I am also able to reproduce this on arch AND fedora
Examples include:
Red Dead Redemption 2, forcing Experimental Proton
The Last of us Forcing proton hotfix
POE 2 forcing experimental
Mass Effect Legendary edition forcing experimental.
This does not seem to be a packaging choice as the packages are 2 completely separately maintained packages. This is very likely a steam client bug. The user choice is being over ridden in SOME but not all games seemingly at random for certain deck-verified games. A work around is of course possible by overriding on a per game basis. However some users may not find that ideal to have the override work and not work at random. Especially on non SteamOS or valve hardware.
This isn't unique to CachyOS. CachyOS uses the default arch package. It also happens on fedora, ubuntu and the flatpak package. It seems like all the distros I've tried have certain games that default to the Steam Deck verification config. I think this is a bug with the steam client
proton hotfixx1 2026-08proton experimentalx1 2026-08
Your system information
tar -zcvf ~/Desktop/steam-logs.tar.gz ~/.steam/steam/logs]Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
Please I would like a option or env var to disable the default proton for some games. Per example, even if I have set the proton I want globally, it will still default in some games to Proton 10 or 11, etc, so you would have to click into the properties from the game and force the Proton you want there. This is annoying and I don't think it should be forced, specially in people that don't use SteamOS.
Steps for reproducing this issue:
Set a Proton you want globally and see how some games still defaults to other proton. Games like Red Dead Redemption 2, The Last of Us, etc.