Valve's Deadlock not launching on hyprland. Wine dumps core.

[ktzee]

For the past 3/4 days I've been unable to launch Valve's Deadlock. Other games launch fine. Even Dota 2 does.
I tried many things without luck. Today I installed sway and plasma and I realized that they do launch there, so it's something to do with hyprland.

I tried launching the game with the new PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND and I tried downgrading hyprland to 0.48.1-5 but there was no difference in behavior.

The bug report in Valve's forum includes all information and has the core dump attached:
https://forums.playdeadlock.com/threads/linux-game-fails-to-launch-wine-dump-in-game-folder-attached.65306/

I can collect any information if needed.

[vaxerski]

is it running in wayland or x11? if wayland, please attach a WAYLAND_DEBUG=1 log.

[ktzee]

Both wayland and xwayland fail to launch in the same way.
Attaching the logs produced by launching like this:

PROTON_LOG=1 PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 WAYLAND_DEBUG=1 %command% 2> debug.log

wayland_debug.log
proton_debug.log

[ktzee]

These are the logs produced on sway, with the same launch options (successful launch).

sway_proton_debug.log
sway_wayland_debug.log

[Jakenv]

I had the same issue as you, I couldn't play since big shop update but today the game randomly worked. As far as I know there was no patch for the game itself.

I use mesa-git, hyprland-git. Besides daily updates for these two (I've checked after every update if it's fixed) I did not change anything with my setup.

BUT Today while trying to find out why my Steam download speeds are low (don't ask) I've installed steam-native-runtime and Deadlock starts now. I use Proton Experimental with these flags PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 %command% -no_prewarm_map -vulkan and non Beta version of Steam.

[ktzee]

I had tried using the steam-native runtime without success.
I tried again today. I used steam-native, I installed mesa-git and I used your exact launch options. Same behavior, the game won't launch.

DOTA2 launches, so it's not even an issue with the particular engine.

[ktzee]

SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland
This was the culprit apparently. Thanks to a discussion with Aureus@quickshill over on Discord I eventually thought of commenting out most of my config and rebooting. The game then launched.
From there, we went by exclusion. Launching the game with SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland %command% would reproduce the issue.
I need to test further but I think this was it.

[junovell]

can we have an update on this?

[junovell]

I can confirm that I have this issue as well. The game crashes when running on Hyprland, but it runs fine on KDE.
I'm not sure whether the issue is caused by Hyprland itself, my NVIDIA GPU, or the NVIDIA driver 580.76.05.
I tested with Proton 9.0-4, Experimental, and TKG Bleeding Edge... none of them worked on Hyprland.
With TKG, I also tried enabling and disabling Wayland support using PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND, but it had no effect.
The game always starts, shows the Valve logo, then the game's spinning icon appears, and it crashes shortly after.

[junovell]

do you have an nvidia GPU? can you send system information and your launch options? hyprctl systeminfo

Hyprland 0.50.1 built from branch  at commit 4e242d086e20b32951fdc0ebcbfb4d41b5be8dcc  ([gha] Nix: update inputs).
Date: Sat Jul 19 21:37:06 2025
Tag: v0.50.1, commits: 6291
built against:
 aquamarine 0.9.2
 hyprlang 0.6.3
 hyprutils 0.8.1
 hyprcursor 0.1.12
 hyprgraphics 0.1.5


no flags were set


System Information:
System name: Linux
Node name: my-sys
Release: 6.16.3-arch1-1.1
Version: #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun, 24 Aug 2025 05:55:08 +0000


GPU information: 
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation TU116 [GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER] [10de:21c4] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX Open Kernel Module for x86_64  580.76.05  Release Build  (root@)  


os-release: NAME="Arch Linux"
PRETTY_NAME="Arch Linux"
ID=arch
BUILD_ID=rolling
ANSI_COLOR="38;2;23;147;209"
HOME_URL="https://archlinux.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://wiki.archlinux.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://bbs.archlinux.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://gitlab.archlinux.org/groups/archlinux/-/issues"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://terms.archlinux.org/docs/privacy-policy/"
LOGO=archlinux-logo


plugins:

[gulafaran]

yeah nvidia, mux switched in bios to run only nvidia.

Hyprland 0.50.0 built from branch main at commit 0ed880f3f7dc2c746bf3590eee266c010d737558 dirty (protocols/activation: revert send an invalid token when serial isn't valid (11505)).
Date: Sun Aug 24 22:59:41 2025
Tag: v0.50.0-114-g0ed880f3f, commits: 6393
built against:
 aquamarine 0.9.4
 hyprlang 0.6.3
 hyprutils 0.8.3
 hyprcursor 0.1.13
 hyprgraphics 0.1.5


no flags were set


System Information:
System name: Linux
Node name: tom-legion
Release: 6.16.3-2-cachyos
Version: #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Mon, 25 Aug 2025 16:15:18 +0000


GPU information: 
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation AD104M [GeForce RTX 4080 Max-Q / Mobile] [10de:27e0] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX Open Kernel Module for x86_64  580.76.05  Release Build  (notroot@)  Mon Aug 25 16:26:35 UTC 2025


os-release: NAME="CachyOS Linux"
PRETTY_NAME="CachyOS"
ID=cachyos
BUILD_ID=rolling
ANSI_COLOR="38;2;23;147;209"
HOME_URL="https://cachyos.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://wiki.cachyos.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://discuss.cachyos.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://github.com/cachyos"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://terms.archlinux.org/docs/privacy-policy/"
LOGO=cachyos

[junovell]

i noticed your aquamarine package is ahead of mine (arch repos are struggling a bit this week) so i decided to install the git version but still nothing, the game just crashes after the valve logo

[MAHBOD-85]

i highly suspect that this is an issue with nvidia's wayland WSI on wlroots based window managers, try to run vkcube with --wsi wayland on nvidia gpu and see it fail

[gulafaran]

vkcube is a seperate issue, and its a vkcube bug KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Tools#1144

[junovell]

I found a solution thanks to a comment on protondb, just run the game with SDL_VIDEODRIVER=windows %command%.
it only worked on proton experimental for me, on proton TKG it crashes after the initial loading screen.

since the game only runs with xwayland (crashes when enabling proton wayland support) it could be an issue on hyprland's xwayland implementation since the game runs fine without any tinkering on KDE.

[ktzee]

This was in the solution I posted a few posts back in this thread.

[junovell]

no where have you mentioned that the solution is SDL_VIDEODRIVER=windows all you said is:

SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland This was the culprit apparently.

and

Launching the game with SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland %command% would reproduce the issue.

[shanshal]

I found a solution thanks to a comment on protondb, just run the game with SDL_VIDEODRIVER=windows %command%.

it only worked on proton experimental for me, on proton TKG it crashes after the initial loading screen.

since the game only runs with xwayland (crashes when enabling proton wayland support) it could be an issue on hyprland's xwayland implementation since the game runs fine without any tinkering on KDE.

This worked for me thank you so much life saver :) on omarchy

[junovell]

happy to help, please consider up-voting the discussion in hopes it gets fixed, we need 5 upvotes for it to be added to the issues tracker

[bringonthepretty]

If everything above doesn't help, make sure SDL_VIDEO_DRIVER and QT_QPA_PLATFORM environment variables in hyprland.conf are commented or removed

[tom-delalande]

I've been struggled with this all day. Here's what ended up working for me.

Launch Options: unset SDL_VIDEODRIVER; %command% -dx11

[nakkamarra]

Using xwayland?

[junovell]

the game crashes when run on wayland

[anthonyhab]

None of these fixes worked for me on 4070, 580.95.05 and GE_Proton10_21-1
Gamescope thankfully resolved it.
gamescope -f -w 3840 -h 2160 --force-grab-cursor -- %command

[Sharpest-Marble]

I thought I was having this issue as well, but it turns out it was an error with wayland, steam, and spaces in the mount point names of hard drives. I'd loaded deadlock onto a hard drive with a space in it, and when i renamed the mount point to remove the spaces, the game launched normally. It wasn't even getting to the point where log files were being generated, because the spaces were interrupting the command when it executes.

I'm leaving this advice here for posterity, and those fools such as I who thought they could insert a space into literally every filepath on their system: Don't do that. Do not insert spaces into mount points; it does not go well.

I'm embarrassed to have even done this; frankly, I should know better.

[junovell]

my path is /mnt/ssd/steam/steamapps/common/Deadlock/ so no, spaces in the path name is not the main issue.

what proton are you using?

[Sharpest-Marble]

proton experimental. it also needs to be in a drive with no spaces in it, though this isn't the only issue wayland could be causing. i can only say what worked for me; the other responses here have other stuff that might work

[junovell]

i think you're mixing things up, first the "spaces in path" is not a wayland problem, it's a proton problem, it will happen on X11 as well. Second proton experimental is known to work because it runs the game in Xwayland, the problem this discussion is created for is the game crashing when running it with a community proton fork that enables wine's wayland support like proton-ge or proton-tkg.

[AlexPlom]

Using a clean Omarchy installation 3.2.0 I managed to get deadlock running by checking out the discord messages for gaming. My solution was to add these parameters to launch:

env -u SDL_VIDEODRIVER %command%

and have set compatibility to Latest Proton. Currently running on Nvidia