Steam client prompts for random UI actions and driver updates.

[lavadrop]

Your system information

• Steam client version: 1692911603
• Distribution: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
• Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
• Steam Logs: Yes, attached to report.
• GPU: AMD

I'm on the latest Steam Beta and I'm getting UI actions without physical input. While on Desktop mode I'm getting prompts to run a Steam Gamepad driver update. When pressing the update button, the program opens a file dialog asking me to restore from backup, which now breaks the UI and the window requires several cancel button presses to be dismissed. When running big picture mode, the UI keeps going back to the main view from any part of the menus, like if I pressed the back button on my controller. Also, I keep getting prompts to update my DualSense firmware which is impossible to do from Steam Linux client and to update Steam's Audio Drivers... wth?

~~ I have confirmed these symptoms disappear when I close an instance of Steam running on a remote Mac I have running 24/7. ~~ Nope, I'm still getting these random prompts with the Mac program terminated.

steam-logs.tar.gz

[kisak-valve]

Possible duplicate of #9795.

[ghost]

Hello, this joystick driver update screen appeared here too, and after clicking to update joystick, steam presented a bug, it did not open, even though it was in the sidebar of the system task manager. I restarted the pc, I don't know if it updated the driver, every time I start it, it starts in a different way, sometimes the big picture takes a long time to open, or some other random bug, like light brakes. But I believe the bugs will disappear soon 😃😃

Kubuntu lts Intel Steam official .deb Channel stable

[hasezoey]

i also have a similar issue, though it is triggered differently than OP, my case is:

• have steam open (not in big picture mode)
• have a controller connected (in my case XBox 360)
• open big picture mode
• start some game (i dont know if this is necessary)
• close game again
• exit big picture mode
• observe steam already asking "Restore from backup"
• (observe steam also opening up the "Controller Layout" window)
• (observe steam maybe also opening up a "A group chat invite was shared that is no longer valid" window)
• close all dialogs and extra windows
• open a game
• observe steam opening up "Restore from backup"
• play the game (or wait somewhat before closing)
• observe steam having many instances of "Restore from backup" open
• observe steam having navigated to https://steamcommunity.com/id/hasezoey/
• observe steam having added [Public - RELEASE Build] to the top (besides the News from Steam button)

also i dont know if this is related or just the game i am playing:

• steam randomly opens up a "A group chat invite was shared that is no longer valid" after the game had been started and closed

i also dont know if this is related, but:

when exiting big picture while a controller is connected, steam somehow always opens up the "Controller Layout"(non big picture mode) interface, even though it was not requested

Steam version:1692911603

Linux Manjaro 23.0.0

EDIT: attached a screenshot of the [Public - RELEASE Build] text

[michaelgosling]

Having these exact same issues. Typically only happens when I exit BPM. I also get “shutting down…” as soon as I launch bpm sometimes. Opted out of beta for now, the issues don’t seem to be happening in stable.

[hasezoey]

i just had this random behavior again, this time even more random:

• once it said "gamepad drivers updated"
• once it even asked me to uninstall a "random" game

Edit: i was once more in big picture mode, and this time:

• a Authorize Device window was open
• a Gamepad driver Update window was open
• steam (non-big picture) is now locked out of:
  • friends & chat (and the top bar Friends too)
  • opening Steam(top-bar) -> Settings
  • opening STORE
  • opening COMMUNITY

[hasezoey]

I did some small testing, it turns out that if steam is started with steam -bigpicture (meaning to start steam directly into big-picture) and then doing some stuff that would normally cause those issues, and then going to exit big-picture, no issues happen (i even tried multiple times to go back into big picture, doing some stuff and exiting back out)

[williamjcm]

Having these exact same issues. Typically only happens when I exit BPM. I also get “shutting down…” as soon as I launch bpm sometimes.

Same here. So far, I haven't experienced anything weird in the desktop UI itself. Only when exiting BPM (or launching it in the case of the "shutting down" screen). I first noticed the issue since I tried using Steam Link to control my machine remotely.

I'm on Arch Linux, using the Steam beta client (version 1693527575, build date Thu, Aug 31 23:03 UTC -08:00).

[bisby]

This has been happening to me a lot this past week on Arch with Steam beta client (Steam Version: 1693527575, Steam Client Build Date: Thu, Aug 31 4:03 PM UTC -08:00).

For me it has mostly been random "your [random thing] drivers are ready for an update". Just now it told me that Sony had a firmware update for my controller. I don't own a Sony controller.

And when it happens. My computer freezes up, and all 64gb of my RAM (+4gb of swap) are suddenly full.

Also, this is happening to me about 30 minutes after exiting a game. I didn't even have steam in the foreground. I had finished playing, and was watching a youtube video, and suddenly this popped up, and froze my system.

[MorbidShell]

I can confirm this is still happening on the latest release of Steam, and the lastest Steam Beta (Version: 1699054352) Fully updated Arch Linux Kernel 6.6.0-273-tkg-eevdf Gnome 45 GPU: AMDGPU RX 7800 XT + also on old R9 Fury

[oatmealine]

Can still repro on Steam Beta ver 1703100617; got this screenshot out of it

[lagerspetz]

Happens here too, Steam client version: 1733265492 Distribution: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS Opted into Steam client beta?: No Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

In the following conditions:

1. Steam voice chat with a friend is started
2. A game is started (Icarus usually, happens for other games too)
3. Voice chat drops
4. When alt-tabbing, Steam is greyed out, with two extra windows, "Steam is shutting down" and "Steam needs to update its gamepad driver" or alternatively "... its audio driver".
5. Steam does not respond to any actions in any of these windows and just hangs in the background
6. I need to kill the steam process manually and restart it to get it working again. At this point, repeating steps 1 and 2 no longer causes the issue for the day.

[lagerspetz]

It happened this morning with just opening a game, not even signed in to Friends & Chat.

1. a game is started
2. When alt-tabbing, Steam is greyed out, with two extra windows, "Steam is shutting down" and "Steam needs to update its gamepad driver" or alternatively "... its audio driver".
3. Steam does not respond to any actions in any of these windows and just hangs in the background
4. The game keeps working though, Steam doesn't kill it
5. I need to kill the steam process manually and restart it to get it working again. At this point, repeating steps 1 and 2 no longer causes the issue for the day.

Screenshot:

[Enderteck]

This is what's been happening to me a lot rencently. When I launch a game, Steam launches many driver update pop-ups and shows the logging off window like here, haven't found any fix yet.

[skabber]

Happens for me very often as well. I'm on NixOS.

[fz6]

Happening to me very frequently, I either get "Would you like to uninstall", or "Steam is shutting down", today I got a random prompt to accept a EULA and separately a page open with a Javascript error on it. It's making games unplayable as of the past couple of weeks.

Ubuntu 22.04.5, Steam 1738026274 (Tue, Jan 28)

[Mondrethos]

Anyone found a way to make it stop yet?

[iv-nn]

Anyone found a way to make it stop yet?

The only workaround I have is to close every Steam window and start the game from the right click menu on the tray icon.

[mochou-p]

(all of this has been fixed after uninstalling gamescope)

steam starts just fine, but after launching a game (CS2) it freaks out, and starts opening: "Audio Driver Update", "Gamepad Driver Update", "Shutting down", "Logging off", "Authorizing"

the game experiences heavy stutters (one is like 5s long), RAM does not fill up, but the computer slows down noticably, and steam is also hard to shutdown (had to spam pkill steam, because normal shutdown, compositor's kill window, or SIGINT in the terminal where steam was started from, did not help)

started happening to me the next day after trying gamescope, doubt its the culprit, but could lead somewhere if more people relate

im on arch linux and wayland, using steam 1.0.0.82-2

[S1mmyy]

I've been getting this same kind of issue on Linux Mint 22.1 occasionally while playing a game. My client version is 1747701111, and I'm not on any beta.

Opening the System Monitor to end the process is the only consistent way to restart Steam, as clicking cancel on the shut down does nothing.

UPDATE: One of my RAM sticks was causing other issues with the PC, and it seems like this was one of the effects. So everyone, test to see if any of your memory is faulty.

[sprc]

I've also seen this multiple times (Manjaro). Very frustrating.

[mdlsvensson]

Still happening for me on Endeavor OS whenever i launch Path of Exile 2

[christophstrasen]

Issue present on nixos 24.11 when launching project zomboid

[kisak-valve]

Steam randomly crash and open random windows after playing a game

Issue transferred from https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/12089. @Krafting posted on 2025-06-06T20:11:37:

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): Steam Version: 1747701111
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Fedora 42
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] No
• Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No] Yes, even reinstalled the whole system
• Steam Logs: [generate by running this command in a terminal tar -zcvf ~/Desktop/steam-logs.tar.gz ~/.steam/steam/logs] steam-logs.tar.gz
• GPU: Nvidia/Intel/AMD AMD 5700 XT / 7900 XT

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Sometimes, when I play a game on steam, steam would try to shutdown (showing the 'Shutting down" message and quitting) but without closing the game.

What's weirder, sometimes steam will launch a random window of the steam client too, for example the "Add a non-steam game" window or even the "change my email" window (yes, not in the steam client itself, in a new window), which is really weird.

This seems to happen only since I switched from an NVIDIA to an AMD GPU (but might just be a bug in newer evrsion of steam after my switch)

I did a full reinstall of Fedora 42 but the issue is still present.

here is an extract of me running steam through the command line until this happen : https://gist.github.com/Krafting/4a7694262fa588e6b00382d44ad945ac

This messages pops up a lot in the logs and in the dump crash file :

Assert( Assertion Failed: Error: RaiseJSException: Method call failed: SharedConnection.SubscribeToEMsg call had invalid argument (arg 0): is_array: true
 ):/data/src/steamUI/spewmanager.cpp:192

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Play a game
2. Wait a bit, this can take longer
3. Steam tries to shut down, open a random window but the game keep running fine

[Skythrew]

Happens for me on all distros, whether it is Fedora 42, NixOS 24.11/25.05, Arch... Very frustrating as it often also leads to game freeze due to Proton not being very "alt-tab friendly".

[Skythrew]

I suspect this may be due to GNOME as I'm always using GNOME and very lastly switched to KDE temporarily and it didn't happen a single time.

[Mondrethos]

I suspect this may be due to GNOME as I'm always using GNOME and very lastly switched to KDE temporarily and it didn't happen a single time.

While I am on Gnome now, has happened a bunch to me on kde.

[iv-nn]

I suspect this may be due to GNOME as I'm always using GNOME and very lastly switched to KDE temporarily and it didn't happen a single time.

It happens to me on Hyprland.

[Skythrew]

So I was just lucky on KDE :/ Very frustrating to see that kind of random bug

[fz6]

Happens to me on Xfce but it does seem like avoiding alt-tabbing while in game reduces the frequency.

On Mon, 9 Jun 2025, 11:02 Maël GUERIN, @.***> wrote:

Skythrew left a comment (ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#10012) https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10012#issuecomment-2955306048

So I was just lucky on KDE :/ Very frustrating to see that kind of random bug

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10012#issuecomment-2955306048, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AA5F6GJ7KYEDBGV6R4VC6WT3CVLRRAVCNFSM6AAAAABUQTRSMOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDSNJVGMYDMMBUHA . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: @.***>

[Krafting]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10012#issuecomment-2896251308

I just tested my memory (32GB of DDR4 3200, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X CPU) with memtest86+, it did 3 full sweep with no errors at all, not sure if this is related.