Steam not Launching games at all

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 6:42pm

Hi,
so running into a new issue where my steam games are not launching at all:

some context about my PC to help with debugging:
i am using an rx9070 on the Radeon Vulkan drivers

a majority of my games are sitting on a seperate m.2 SSD however games that are on my OS SSD do not launch either.
I’ve tried swapping between Proton versions (including GE Proton)
Tried disabling shader compilation, and disabling overlay
I am using the repo version of steam not the flatpak

so to get to trying some solutions:
running steam via the terminal to see errors gives me this

chdir "/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Balatro"
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64): ignored.
pid 4827 != 4826, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
Game Recording - would start recording game 2379780, but recording for this game is disabled
Adding process 4826 for gameID 2379780
Game Recording - game stopped [gameid=2379780]
Removing process 4826 for gameID 2379780
chdir "/mnt/thecoolestdrive/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/MarvelRivals"
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64): ignored.
pid 5285 != 5282, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
Game Recording - would start recording game 2767030, but recording for this game is disabled
Adding process 5282 for gameID 2767030
Game Recording - game stopped [gameid=2767030]
Removing process 5282 for gameID 2767030

So i am not quite sure what else i could be doing to fix it. Any help would be appreciated

Thank you

Mox · July 30, 2025, 7:12pm

I didn’t save my error, but I ran into something that looked similar with darktide earlier this week. It was not affecting all games (I started up Trash of the Titans just fine) but I ended up having to reinstall darktide entirely.

Things I attempted that did not work:

Changing proton version
Deleting the compat data prefixes
Deleting the launcher folder and validating the game to reinstall it

If you can, I’d sync cloud saves (or manually copy them if you can), than see if a reinstall fixes Balatro, iirc it’s pretty small so the dl and reinstall should be fairly quick

Edit: Maybe before that try to clear shader cache and/or use launch command LD_PRELOAD="" %COMMAND% bc it looks like it might be having a shader issue?

MichelN · July 30, 2025, 7:14pm

Is the gaming partition formatted in ntfs ? Mesa drivers installed too ? Flatpak install ? We need more info!

d-air1 · July 30, 2025, 7:15pm

As a last resort, maybe try nuking the steam folder and all related files. That solved a similar issue years ago, and I haven’t had the problem since.

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 7:26pm

So balatro i installed just to check if the launching issue was just with my external ssd. So i installed it about 5 minutes before making this post so it doesnt seem to be that.

Changing proton did not do anything sadly
Ive tried an entire reinstall of steam also nothing
Will try and report

Ive tried deleting shader caches as well. No luck. I know rivals requires the steamdeck =1 %command% to run but i dont think thats the issue because it does not launch any of my games

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 7:28pm

Both are formatred in btrfs

Not flatpack. Im using the install from the pacman repo. and no mesa drivers installed either

Apologies about the sparse info im not quite too sure what else could be effecting the game running.

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 7:29pm

I did entirely reinstall steam incuding deleting all the locally installed files. No dice

MichelN · July 30, 2025, 7:31pm

Install mesa and check if you dont have a igpu running.

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 7:32pm

Not sure how to check if IGPU is running but let me go try. Thank you!

MichelN · July 30, 2025, 7:34pm

Here are some commands you need to run

sudo pacman -S mesa lib32-mesa

sudo pacman -S vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 7:39pm

Ran both, Rebooted. no dice still the same terminal output when games are trying to launch.

MichelN · July 30, 2025, 7:46pm

Did you add the command LD_PRELOAD=“” %command%

And is steam overlay enabled? If yes try to disable it.

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 7:50pm

Steam Overlay is disabled, And yes i did add the command to the launch arguments:

as for amd driver:

lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display'
0a:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Navi 48 [Radeon RX 9070/9070 XT/9070 GRE] (rev c3)
        Subsystem: Sapphire Technology Limited Device e489
        Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
        Kernel modules: amdgpu

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 7:52pm

So for example if i try run deltarune:

and heres the terminal output for when i run it:

chdir "/mnt/thecoolestdrive/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/DELTARUNE"
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '“”' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (cannot open shared object file): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '“”' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (cannot open shared object file): ignored.
Game Recording - would start recording game 1671210, but recording for this game is disabled
Adding process 3619 for gameID 1671210
Game Recording - game stopped [gameid=1671210]
Removing process 3619 for gameID 1671210

MichelN · July 30, 2025, 7:57pm

What happens if you do not use the LD_PRELOAD=“” %command% command ?

I never use anything on steam, just proton and play.

Gamemoderun installed ?

d-air1 · July 30, 2025, 8:02pm

Reinstalling usually does nothing on linux. On platforms like ios and android, reinstalling deletes cache and user settings. That is why it fixes things. Did you get every steam folder when you did this. The hidden steam files in the home folder. The ones in the .local folder. Some of those are symlinks so it is easy to miss things.

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 8:07pm

Im not too sure what gamemoderun is but i assume no

chdir "/mnt/thecoolestdrive/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/DELTARUNE"
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/matthew/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64): ignored.
pid 4734 != 4733, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
Game Recording - would start recording game 1671210, but recording for this game is disabled
Adding process 4733 for gameID 1671210
Game Recording - game stopped [gameid=1671210]
Removing process 4733 for gameID 1671210

almost the exact same output with the launch argument removed

Retsukki · July 30, 2025, 8:09pm

I did not in the .local Thank you for pointing that out. unfortunately i have to sleep as i have work in the morning. So i will update tomorrow on how that goes. Thank you for your help so far

noobr · July 31, 2025, 11:51am

Old Arch post about the error. Maybe something here might help?

I’d backup any save games I wanted to keep before doing anything if it were me.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=246519

–-I’d be careful in this thread as the OP has an NVIDIA graphics not a RADEON and it looks like it was written for X11 and never updated: Granted I did not read the whole thing so…just ask here before doing anything you do not understand.

and also the main event: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam/Troubleshooting#

I have never seen SO much information on the Linux Steam client, all together in one place.

snippet:

ldd ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam

Should ldd claim that it is not a dynamic executable, then Steam likely corrupted the binary during an update. The following should fix the issue:

$ cd ~/.local/share/Steam/
$ ./steam.sh --reset

If it does not, try to delete the ~/.local/share/Steam/ directory and launch Steam again, telling it to reinstall itself.

This error message can also occur due to a bug in Steam which occurs when your $HOME directory ends in a slash (Valve GitHub issue 3730). This can be fixed by editing /etc/passwd and changing /home/username/ to /home/username, then logging out and in again. Afterwards, Steam should repair itself automatically.

noobr · July 31, 2025, 12:08pm

Do something like this: I got it from another website here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/31

and check this out to please:

ldd /home/myusername/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so

and

ldd /home/myusername/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/gameoverlayrenderer.so

and

Post the output–should be clean=no errors