XCOM 2 is so popular it has beaten the all time peak player count of a number of games

Yeah, I bet you whiffed that shot.

Hell, I missed three 97% shots in a row today. That's enough to make you want to punch things in the face with your fists.

For a few people like me, the game is not working at all. 3D does not draw, main menu and maps are black with artifacts, see: http://steamcommunity.com/app/268500/discussions/0/412446292761093493/
Still in contact with Feral, but so far they have not been able to reproduce. However, 4 users are reporting the issue.

For a few people like me, the game is not working at all. 3D does not draw, main menu and maps are black with artifacts, see: http://steamcommunity.com/app/268500/discussions/0/412446292761093493/
Still in contact with Feral, but so far they have not been able to reproduce. However, 4 users are reporting the issue.

It's definitely something custom/badly setup a that number of people have installed on their distro, the GL errors point to something with the hardware/software on the graphics or window manager side as they are failures you should never see on a correctly working system. The game is drawing badly because the distro is not initialising OpenGL correctly for XCOM 2.

Given the extreme rareness of the issue and that it cannot be reproduced on a clean installation of Linux means this might take a little longer to resolve as we can only guess remotely what is going wrong.

It's definitely something custom/badly setup a that number of people have installed on their distro, the GL errors point to something with the hardware/software on the graphics or window manager side as they are failures you should never see on a correctly working system. The game is drawing badly because the distro is not initialising OpenGL correctly for XCOM 2.

But how do you explain heavy weight games such as Shadow of Mordor or Alien Isolation are working well on the same setup?


Last edited by zeb on 9 February 2016 at 9:23 am UTC

For those who have no issue, could you please run the game using:
LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose .local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/XCOM\ 2/XCOM2.sh
and see if you get the same GL error messages than in http://steamcommunity.com/app/268500/discussions/0/412446292761093493/#c412446292772881060

Thanks in advance.

It's definitely something custom/badly setup a that number of people have installed on their distro, the GL errors point to something with the hardware/software on the graphics or window manager side as they are failures you should never see on a correctly working system. The game is drawing badly because the distro is not initialising OpenGL correctly for XCOM 2.

But how do you explain heavy weight games such as Shadow of Mordor or Alien Isolation are working well on the same setup?

It only takes one issue to cause software to fail. It is a notable data point that you might have other games working but that is one of many data points you need to take into consideration when investigating a problem. Given the issue is super rare and cannot be reproduced on the same hardware by other most other users or at Feral QA hints that something else (likely some custom setup) is causing the issue with GL not initialising.

We're investigating but rare issues that cannot be reproduced on clean distro installations are the hardest to track down as they are being triggered by unknown factors and you can't fix an issue without working out the triggering factor.

We're investigating but rare issues that cannot be reproduced on clean distro installations are the hardest to track down as they are being triggered by unknown factors and you can't fix an issue without working out the triggering factor.

Yes, I understand the problem not being able to reproduce. I am puzzled because I am using my distro standard packages, not any custom kernel/drivers, and they are known to work for other users with the same graphics card model.

Where should I look then? Should I start to remove some packages? Alternatively, what I can try is to create a new partition and do a Linux installation from scratch, and see how it goes.

However, we are 6 people reporting the same issue on Steam forums so far. I know this is not a big number, but could be enough to try recoup common denominators.

Firstly, are the GL context error we see specific to those who have the menu and map rendering issue? Or is it unrelated (and thus would show to everyone)?

We're investigating but rare issues that cannot be reproduced on clean distro installations are the hardest to track down as they are being triggered by unknown factors and you can't fix an issue without working out the triggering factor.

Yes, I understand the problem not being able to reproduce. I am puzzled because I am using my distro standard packages, not any custom kernel/drivers, and they are known to work for other users with the same graphics card model.

Where should I look then? Should I start to remove some packages? Alternatively, what I can try is to create a new partition and do a Linux installation from scratch, and see how it goes.

However, we are 6 people reporting the same issue on Steam forums so far. I know this is not a big number, but could be enough to try recoup common denominators.

We've had 5 people including you mention this in the steam thread (4) or via support email (1) and there are few if any common denominators.

Out of those users we have 3 different distros, 3 different versions of drivers and 3 different series of Nvidia graphics card in use. However none of those cards, distros or drivers reproduce the issue and we also have a huge number of Linux players playing on exactly the same setups without issue. It's puzzling but if you have a spare partition and are willing installing a new distro it would be worth seeing what a fresh distro does as it should just work fine.

We'll keep tracking the data we get here an update you via support if we notice anything suspicious that could be the cause of this rare issue.

performance is pretty good with the beta branch, which sadly isnt made to public yet.

Thanks for sharing, that's great to hear!

I'm still pondering about buying the Steam Controller bundle, and I still wonder...

... does anybody know how long the XCOM 2 & Steam Controller bundle will be sold?

To protect your privacy, external media requires approval to load. Source: i.imgur.com
View cookie preferences.
Accept & Show Accept All & Don't show this again   Direct Link

Let me guess, he missed his 99% chance? :D

We've had 5 people including you mention this in the steam thread (4) or via support email (1) and there are few if any common denominators.

Out of those users we have 3 different distros, 3 different versions of drivers and 3 different series of Nvidia graphics card in use. However none of those cards, distros or drivers reproduce the issue and we also have a huge number of Linux players playing on exactly the same setups without issue. It's puzzling but if you have a spare partition and are willing installing a new distro it would be worth seeing what a fresh distro does as it should just work fine.

We'll keep tracking the data we get here an update you via support if we notice anything suspicious that could be the cause of this rare issue.

I was also counting this 6th user: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/linux-gaming/850104-here-is-what-happens-when-trying-to-use-non-nvidia-drivers-to-play-xcom-2-on-linux?p=850114#post850114 but you are right, this one crashes instead of having corrupt rendering. Could be different.

I will try in the end a new install (quite a lot of work to do :) ) and return to you. Then if it is working, I could try to play the difference game...


Last edited by zeb on 9 February 2016 at 10:44 am UTC

I was also counting this 6th user: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/linux-gaming/850104-here-is-what-happens-when-trying-to-use-non-nvidia-drivers-to-play-xcom-2-on-linux?p=850114#post850114 but you are right, this one crashes instead of having corrupt rendering. Could be different.

That looks like the crash caused by VPN being enabled which you can work around by disabling VPN. We have a fix for this in the next patch.

I will try in the end a new install (quite a lot of work to do :) ) and return to you. Then if it is working, I could try to play the difference game...

Sorry and thank you for trying it out! Your results will definitely be very useful please do pass them onto Gerard. If we find anything else out we'll let you know.


Last edited by edddeduck_feral on 9 February 2016 at 10:48 am UTC

No problem. One last question: do you use Xorg 1.17 or 1.18 at Feral? Have you tested any system with Xorg 1.18?

No problem. One last question: do you use Xorg 1.17 or 1.18 at Feral? Have you tested any system with Xorg 1.18?

1.17 is the version included by default in Ubuntu so that's the one we used during testing.

Thanks. However I checked with other users on Archlinux forums, and one person returned to me, having no issues with xorg 1.18/nvidia 361.19.

Thanks. However I checked with other users on Archlinux forums, and one person returned to me, having no issues with xorg 1.18/nvidia 361.19.

Yep I don't think the distro, card or driver version is the key to this issue. I guess it's something else but what that is is the million dollar question :)

Glad that Feral is actively working on stuttering. In the meanwhile, this advice really helps for the gameplay part at least. Cutscenes with the shuttle still lag as hell but battles are much, much better. Thank you, pedrojmartm, for sharing.

Yep I don't think the distro, card or driver version is the key to this issue. I guess it's something else but what that is is the million dollar question :)

On Arch forums, WorMzy has the same graphics card, but for him the game is working fine, despite having the GL context error too. So the context error are likely to be a red herring. We are trying to find out differences.


Last edited by zeb on 9 February 2016 at 9:58 pm UTC

Yep I don't think the distro, card or driver version is the key to this issue. I guess it's something else but what that is is the million dollar question :)

So as discussed, I have used a blank hard drive to do a full reinstall of Archlinux 64, nvidia drivers 361.28, xorg 1.18, pulseaudio and LXDE desktop. Then installed Steam and imported XCOM2. Guess what? It works fine!

Please note the GL context errors seems to be still there, so they are not related to the bug.

Now where do you want to take it from there? It would be great to find out the key difference between the working and non-working systems, this would be so informative. Of course, the cause of the issue could be numerous, since my "non-working" system, which I have used for years, is quite different from the newly installed one. IS it a specific package? Or an update that messes up some links? Could it be related to installed fonts? They look a bit different in Steam on the new install. Or the Desktop manager?


Last edited by zeb on 10 February 2016 at 1:44 pm UTC