This sounds like a version mismatch of the alsa libraries between the system and the steam runtime.
it seems like it happens only for some games. BorderlandsPreSequel is effect, but not mcdroid. I could test other games if you want and see which libraries they have in common.
okay, removing all ALSA librariy from the steam-runtime fixes the issues for steam and the games. Currently I am using the alsa-lib version 1.0.28, which I have updated end of June.
Is there a way to blacklist files in the steam-runtime, so that the alsa-lib binaries won't get installed? I have to remove the files now every time they get installed, which is really rarely, but still annoying when its happening.
Not that I know of, we really need a post-update shell script to fire off so the non-ubuntu package maintainers can take care of their users.
I see. Thanks for the info anyway.
For what it's worth, I've been actually trying to figure out what the problem is. I'm working with a game that uses FMOD4. When attempting to use ALSA instead of the default Pulse environment, ALSA wigs out, sometimes causing a crash. Arch Linux and Gentoo users sometimes are strict about not using PulseAudio and this has really made it impossible to support them without asking them to delete or move the ALSA libraries out of their steam environment.
Either updating the ALSA libraries distributed or not distributing them at all is a clean solution. It can be assumed that all systems have ALSA libraries, and even if they didn't, that's for the audio engine to find and handle (considering the very rare OSSv4 users).
I've ended up having pulseaudio running only for steam with a pulse to alsa dmix setup, which works pretty good.
Hello @karolherbst, since this issue report was last looked at, how Steam handles the steam runtime has changed to prefer system libraries over the runtime variants by default.
Are you still experiencing this issue on an up to date system?
Closing pending feedback.
I migrated my system to use pulseaudio now, so I wouldn't be able to tell that eassily
Nothing extracted yet.
for a week or two I have now sound issues in games when I start games through steam. Also steam itself only pushes garbage through the audio device, which shouldn't happen when pulseaudio wasn't found.
Sound in games work when launched from outside of steam without problems.
The sound is really annoying and louder than anything else. Steam should simply don't try to output sound and default to sys defualts for games launched through steam.