Update 21:17: Looks like Proton developers have updated the "bleeding-edge" Beta for Proton Experimental, that works around the issue. Note: using it can cause other issues, the Beta doesn't have a lot of testing, you've been warned.
If you go into the Properties on Proton Experimental in your Steam Library, and opt into the "bleeding-edge" Beta, then set your Ubisoft games to use Proton Experimental it will fix it for now until a proper Proton update is out.
Update 22:11: Valve released a Proton Experimental (no Beta needed) fix for this.
Original article below
Third-party launchers on Steam are once again being a massive nuisance. First it was EA breaking everything on Linux and Steam Deck and now it's Ubisoft telling everyone to hold their beer.
Valve fixed the EA App in Proton after a while, and it's likely we're going to need to wait on a fix from Valve again for whatever Ubisoft changed in the latest Ubisoft Connect update.
When you go to launch any game on desktop Linux or Steam Deck that uses Ubisoft Connect, it will do an update and then you'll be greeted with this:
That picture above is from my Fedora Linux desktop trying Ghost Recon Breakpoint today.
After testing The Division 2, Watch Dogs Legion, Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Ghost Recon Breakpoint on my Steam Deck too, they all also gave the exact same problem as you'll see in the screenshot below from my Steam Deck:
So it seems that every title that uses Ubisoft Connect, is now left broken on Linux desktop and Steam Deck. This comes only two weeks after Ubisoft fixed The Division 2 for Steam Deck / Linux. Meanwhile, Breakpoint still needs manual fixes.
Why do developers and publishers keep forcing these absolutely useless third-party launchers on us? Never once have I, or anyone I've spoken to, actually wanted them. They only ever cause problems and solve basically nothing that Steam cannot already do directly.
I've logged an official bug report with Valve and notified their developers about it.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It's apparent to me that it's more like: whine. If you are gamer that is...
By the way i'll throw some ideas out there in the wild:
1. an open-source game fund organization must exist:
- main task is to collect donations/funds
- have committee (or whatever) that review funding requests for open-source games
2. crowd funded linux game porting...
- we as community must unite and crowdfund anything worth porting
Last edited by bolokanar on 2 February 2023 at 5:42 pm UTC
mr-victory Feb 2, 2023
At least their lancher is native, and actually works.My PRIME laptop would like to join the chat.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/launcher-2021-1-linux-launcher-interface-appears-completely-black-when-used-with-nvidia-prime-render-offload.1456291/page-2
Perkeleen_Vittupää Feb 2, 2023
legluondunet Feb 2, 2023
It appears to have gotten a fix https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Changelog
Proton's changelogs are very impressive, Valve devs don't have to sleep much.
At least their lancher is native, and actually works.My PRIME laptop would like to join the chat.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/launcher-2021-1-linux-launcher-interface-appears-completely-black-when-used-with-nvidia-prime-render-offload.1456291/page-2
Can't confirm it. On my main pc, a Nvidia PRIMA laptop, the launcher only showed a black screen when on Nvidia 470 and Wine. With the latest NVIDIA and using the native builds instead (as I have no disabled steam play for every title regardless of available build) the launcher works great.
slaapliedje Feb 3, 2023
I only just recently got Far Cry 4 working after years of wanting to. I had pretty much given up on Ubisoft games (except for old bollocks free ones, from back when they were one of my favourite game companies)Their Ubi Connect thing is trash. It logs you out mid-game, and so at the end of your play session have to input your log in credentials again if you want it to cloud sync the save... and this is on Windows (I could never get it to perform well in Linux at my 3840x1200@144 resolution).
A while back I bought Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I had been watching my nephew playing it and I was all psyched for it. It just kept asking me for a non existent license key. In a Ubisoft FAQ, they were basically saying it wasn't their problem and that there are no license keys for the Steam purchased copies. The Uplay client was opening, and I could even see other tied games I owned in there, but the new one would just not activate. That kind of put me off, so I didn't even try to solve it. I just sent it back for refund, disappointed.
They are so afraid that someone is going to play their game without paying for it, that they cause all that aggravation and get people to stop buying. Also, as said in this very discussion, the people that pirate it will have a better experience. As usual, the harder you squeeze, the more that will slip through your fingers :-)
It's not just Linux users that have trouble with their DRM mechanisms either, it has caused unnecessary problems for people on Windows too.
A side note, first awesome game I played that I remember being by Ubisoft was this. https://mobygames.com/game/fred_ that I played on the Atari ST.
Dribbleondo Feb 3, 2023
Case in point: The racing game they just announced yesterday has a nice little EGS logo at the end of the trailer. Ubisoft doesn't give a single crap about their Steam customers.
"Grrr, EOS is bad?" Last I checked, EOS has been working for ages with Proton and Wine, so this just comes off as an odd complaint.
Not really? My point is that Ubisoft doesn't care about their Steam customers. If they did, they wouldn't be holding back their new releases specifically from Steam. I never said anything about EGS working or not working.
Again, I misunderstood the comment. I've deleted it now because it's causing confusion.
Last edited by Dribbleondo on 3 February 2023 at 12:13 pm UTC
legluondunet Feb 3, 2023
I saw different causes on internet, all very differents (change MTU, font problem...).
I just tested again, I can reproduce the bug with Proton GE 7.48 on Lutris.
But if I set to Lutris Wine 7.2-2 (Lutris default wine version) it works.
Someone can explain technically what cause this error after Ubisoft Connect update?
I saw different causes on internet, all very differents (change MTU, font problem...).
I just tested again, I can reproduce the bug with Proton GE 7.48 on Lutris.
But if I set to Lutris Wine 7.2-2 (Lutris default wine version) it works.
I looked into it a little. Basically, the problem is with Angle. A lot of these game clients are really dumb assed Chrome browsers at the back end. What these browsers (Firefox similarly) do is use OpenGL ES but translate them to DirectX calls on the Windows platform. Angle is the layer that does this.
It doesn't really translate that well, so what Valve does is use some directives inherent in the Chrome back end.
Really, this Ubisoft update broke a previous workaround for their horseshit.
Since Valve customizes Wine, they can add specific overrides to the Wine "kernel" such that when "UplayWebCore.exe" is run, it will be fed parameters to override Angle.
Previously, Valve was passing --use-gl=swiftshader. This stopped working after the Ubisoft update.
So they changed it to --use-angle=gl which I presume makes it use regular desktop opengl and not translate it (passthrough sort of thing)
The reason I think this works with the lutris 7.2-2 runner is because of "D3D Extras" (enabled by default, symlinked into the prefix etc... you know how Lutris works)
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