Update: a follower of ours on Mastodon pointed out it's a Mesa driver issue in the ACO shader compiler, and there's a fix noted so hopefully Valve will update the Steam Deck AMD GPU driver soon. Update #2: a Valve developer mentioned on Twitter a fix is in testing.
Having recently finished Mass Effect Legendary Edition, I was in the mood for something different so I picked Death Stranding Director's Cut but it seems there's a rather annoying issue that can reboot your Steam Deck.
Tested across various versions of Proton: when you load up the map, as soon as you move the Right Joystick, the game will freeze and quite often crash so hard it will reboot my Steam Deck. When going to report the issue on the official Proton GitHub, it seems I was beaten to it a few days before by someone else seeing the same issue. While I've only tested it on SteamOS 3.4 Preview, their report states it happens to them on the Stable channel too.
Workaround: for now, I was able to work around it by setting the Right Joystick to Joystick Mouse in Steam Input, although that means I can no longer tilt the map but at least the game won't keep dying on me.
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It doesn't always reboot the Steam Deck though and took me three random crashing reboots to realise what was happening. Sometimes it will just lock up the game, other times the game will close with an error message. Thoroughly annoying for a Deck Verified game.
A very confusing issue. Hopefully Valve will figure out what's going on if it's a game issue, a Proton issue, a Steam Input issue, an AMD GPU driver issue or something else.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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19 comments
The bug is NOT in Death Stranding.
Bug is in driver/hardware of Steamdeck. Dev was just nice enough to address it in game's code.
Bug should be submitted with valve/GPU/Driver maker.
Bug is in driver/hardware of Steamdeck. Dev was just nice enough to address it in game's code.
Bug should be submitted with valve/GPU/Driver maker.
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The bug is NOT in Death Stranding.See the article update done before you commented. I didn't mean it was specifically in the game, but the game shows the issue.
Bug is in driver/hardware of Steamdeck. Dev was just nice enough to address it in game's code.
Bug should be submitted with valve/GPU/Driver maker.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 6 December 2022 at 1:54 pm UTC
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I was thinking of grabbing this as it's currently on sale. Will have to remember to update my drivers if I do get it.
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FifteenthPen Dec 6, 2022
Oh thank goodness there's a fix inbound! I had to stop playing Death Stranding on my desktop (radeon 6900 XT) when the bug got introduced around the time kernel 6.0 came out. I couldn't figure out what was triggering it or how to reliably reproduce it beyond it usually happening when I had the map open. I'm looking forward to finally getting back to playing it!
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StalePopcorn Dec 6, 2022
That probably explains the hard system freeze I experienced once while playing. Manjaro Testing-Branch already had mesa 22.2.x released, I haven't experienced it again.
Edit (08/12/22); tried to rotate map, held Alt, clicked—FREEZE! No way around a force shutdown. Mesa 22.2.4, 6800XT, Manjaro KDE Wayland
Last edited by StalePopcorn on 8 December 2022 at 8:54 pm UTC
Edit (08/12/22); tried to rotate map, held Alt, clicked—FREEZE! No way around a force shutdown. Mesa 22.2.4, 6800XT, Manjaro KDE Wayland
Last edited by StalePopcorn on 8 December 2022 at 8:54 pm UTC
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My post may have happened BEFORE you made an update or WHILE you were making it. or I did read earlier version of article, wanted to respond, let it be for some time and THEN submitted my comment.
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Hi Liam,
I’m still getting this issue on the epic version of the game, launched via heroic games launcher. Do I need to switch the proton version being used to take advantage of the fix?
I’m still getting this issue on the epic version of the game, launched via heroic games launcher. Do I need to switch the proton version being used to take advantage of the fix?
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Hi Liam,It was a graphics driver fix not a Proton fix, so the fix is in the latest SteamOS.
I’m still getting this issue on the epic version of the game, launched via heroic games launcher. Do I need to switch the proton version being used to take advantage of the fix?
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While I saw the "Fix" Listed in the 3.4 Steam OS update, It doesn't seem to have fixed the issue from my testing.
I am using the Epic version using Heroic Launcher to install. And tested base Death Stranding and the Directors Cut.
Also tested with different versions of Proton. 7.0-4 (default that worked in the past I believe), Experimental set to the Bleeding Edge Beta channel in Steam, and GE Proton 7-43.
Also tested on Stable OS Branch 3.4.4 as well as Main Update 3.5 with no change.
The game looks and runs fantastic, but you cannot touch that right stick with the map up or it instantly crashes the video driver and freezes the game. After a few taps of the Steam button it will finally reboot Steam and you're back to square one.
Can anyone else confirm/test with the Steam version of the game to see if the fix is somehow linked to being installed through Steam vs Epic? I just owned the game over a year ago on Epic and was able to play it just fine months ago until the bug appeared and it's been broken ever since.
I am using the Epic version using Heroic Launcher to install. And tested base Death Stranding and the Directors Cut.
Also tested with different versions of Proton. 7.0-4 (default that worked in the past I believe), Experimental set to the Bleeding Edge Beta channel in Steam, and GE Proton 7-43.
Also tested on Stable OS Branch 3.4.4 as well as Main Update 3.5 with no change.
The game looks and runs fantastic, but you cannot touch that right stick with the map up or it instantly crashes the video driver and freezes the game. After a few taps of the Steam button it will finally reboot Steam and you're back to square one.
Can anyone else confirm/test with the Steam version of the game to see if the fix is somehow linked to being installed through Steam vs Epic? I just owned the game over a year ago on Epic and was able to play it just fine months ago until the bug appeared and it's been broken ever since.
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While I saw the "Fix" Listed in the 3.4 Steam OS update, It doesn't seem to have fixed the issue from my testing.Heroic via Flatpak will use a different Mesa version from the Flatpak runtime, which doesn't have the fix yet.
I am using the Epic version using Heroic Launcher to install. And tested base Death Stranding and the Directors Cut.
Also tested with different versions of Proton. 7.0-4 (default that worked in the past I believe), Experimental set to the Bleeding Edge Beta channel in Steam, and GE Proton 7-43.
Also tested on Stable OS Branch 3.4.4 as well as Main Update 3.5 with no change.
The game looks and runs fantastic, but you cannot touch that right stick with the map up or it instantly crashes the video driver and freezes the game. After a few taps of the Steam button it will finally reboot Steam and you're back to square one.
Can anyone else confirm/test with the Steam version of the game to see if the fix is somehow linked to being installed through Steam vs Epic? I just owned the game over a year ago on Epic and was able to play it just fine months ago until the bug appeared and it's been broken ever since.
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So that's the issue. Dang it.
And trying to launch the game with Steam Runtime seems to not be working out from what I have tested.
I did find a workaround of sorts. If you add a Non-Steam game and point it at the Heroic installed DeathStranding.exe and run the game through Steam directly, It works just fine. No crash or glitch at all tilting the map around.
This requires you to login to Epic on first launch (Do this from Desktop Mode), but after that it works normally.
Only thing is this will keep your saves from cloud syncing to something to be thoughtful of. You can possibly copy the saves around manually but haven't test that yet.
Last edited by IM0001 on 4 January 2023 at 10:32 pm UTC
And trying to launch the game with Steam Runtime seems to not be working out from what I have tested.
I did find a workaround of sorts. If you add a Non-Steam game and point it at the Heroic installed DeathStranding.exe and run the game through Steam directly, It works just fine. No crash or glitch at all tilting the map around.
This requires you to login to Epic on first launch (Do this from Desktop Mode), but after that it works normally.
Only thing is this will keep your saves from cloud syncing to something to be thoughtful of. You can possibly copy the saves around manually but haven't test that yet.
Last edited by IM0001 on 4 January 2023 at 10:32 pm UTC
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Right, here’s what I've done so far. Reminder that I have this game on epic and am using via heroic games launcher.
I confirmed the crash happens when I touch the right analogue stick when the map is visible. Input and game freezes, pressing the steam button causes the screen to go blank, come back on, then SteamOS restarts. The game keeps running as I can hear the background noise.
Great to hear the Steam Runtime will fix this issue.
Enabling the checkbox ‘Use Steam Runtime’ in Heroic Games launcher causes the game to not launch at all, seems like a different issue.
I then added the game exe as a non-steam game in steam, so that I can use the steam runtime. In the compatibility section of the properties menu, I checked ‘Force use of specific Steam play compatibility tool’ and selected Steam Linux Runtime. Now clicking play doesn't do anything. If I uncheck this box, nothing happens either. Checking the box and selecting ‘proton experimental’ does work.
Now at this point I’d test if the issue is fixed, but the save game is missing. So I've copied the save game from the roaming folder in the windows tree emulation from epic to steam, but the save still doesn't appear.
I think I’ll probably just change the control scheme at this point, its been a real pain and I’ve got nowhere.
I confirmed the crash happens when I touch the right analogue stick when the map is visible. Input and game freezes, pressing the steam button causes the screen to go blank, come back on, then SteamOS restarts. The game keeps running as I can hear the background noise.
Great to hear the Steam Runtime will fix this issue.
Enabling the checkbox ‘Use Steam Runtime’ in Heroic Games launcher causes the game to not launch at all, seems like a different issue.
I then added the game exe as a non-steam game in steam, so that I can use the steam runtime. In the compatibility section of the properties menu, I checked ‘Force use of specific Steam play compatibility tool’ and selected Steam Linux Runtime. Now clicking play doesn't do anything. If I uncheck this box, nothing happens either. Checking the box and selecting ‘proton experimental’ does work.
Now at this point I’d test if the issue is fixed, but the save game is missing. So I've copied the save game from the roaming folder in the windows tree emulation from epic to steam, but the save still doesn't appear.
I think I’ll probably just change the control scheme at this point, its been a real pain and I’ve got nowhere.
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As I already explained briefly above, the only thing that will fix it is an update to the Flatpak Mesa runtime to include the fix Valve have in the normal Mesa version used for games on Steam Deck. Flatpak uses its own runtime for Mesa. This is why buying direct from Steam is just better overall.
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It wasn’t free on Steam unfortunately 
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The way I decided to go for now was just to install Epic Game Store as a Non-Steam Game, Install Death Stranding through that, and play it through that which allows the game to both Cloud Save, and Not Crash since it's all running under Steam's Runtime completely. So far works perfectly and keeps everything within a nice single Prefix.
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Pleased to say that using heroic games launcher now works with the right thumb stick on the map, after a recent update to proton.
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