ValveSoftware
STALCRAFT: X (1818450)
Compatibility Report
- Name of the game with compatibility issues: STALCRAFT: X
- Steam AppID of the game: 1818450
System Information
- GPU: RX 7900 XTX
- Video driver version: Mesa 25.2.0
- Kernel version: 6.15.9-106.bazzite.fc42.x86_64
- Link to full system information report: https://gist.github.com/NjlsShade/e3bb706f0b6d28f14bd66da1c0a48113
- Proton version: Latest Experimental at time of posting (experimental-10.0-20250827b)
I confirm:
- [x] that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
- [x] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.
Symptoms
The game is freezing randomly, this usually happens anywhere from a few minutes to an hour of playing. The game stays open on the last frame and I have to manually kill the process. This happens regardless of hardware or Linux distro.
I looked over the games log file and it just abruptly cuts off when it freezes, and I've replicated the crash when using Zink, as well as many different versions of Proton, primarily from 9 and 10.
Reproduction
Start the game and load into the main area, not sure if the tutorial will trigger it, but It may.
I've attached two proton log files, each was the result of the game freezing.
After doing some more testing, I've found that the game takes significantly longer to crash when using GE-Proton8-32 (consistently 2-4 hours).
Newer GE versions are crashing after 30 minutes to an hour just like vanilla Proton.
OUTDATED INFO - Currently 6.3-8 and 6.4-GE-1 work perfectly with no crashes
The game seems to have a pretty nasty bug that can be caused by using GE-Proton7-55. From my testing, if the bug is triggered, It will cause any character save currently loaded to be rendered unplayable on any version of wine/Proton, no matter the device you try to play on.
A consistent way to replicate the bug is to launch into the game using GE-Proton7-55, then enter and exit the FireStation at any point (this can be done right after doing a quick tutorial at the start of the game by ignoring any quests given and running straight north of AdaminHQ). Wait for your game to crash, this usually happens a few minutes after leaving the FireStation, then after this crash occurs, any future login to that character using any version of wine or Proton will cause the game to crash either immediately, or around 45 seconds after loading into the world. The game will not crash when using the affected character on Windows, however, the trait causing the crash with wine/Proton will remain, making the character unplayable on Linux. NOTE: The FireStation is not the exclusive way of activating this bug, and it can happen at any point when using this version of Proton.
I have tested logging into an affected account on multiple different computers with fresh installs of the game, as well as many different Linux VMs and containers using various kernel and mesa versions. It is not hardware dependent, or caused by any driver that I can tell, I instead believe this to be some form of data saved server-side for your character, either some arbitrary junk that got into the database which somehow only affects Linux when called (loading some content that was not intended, causing corrupt data in memory, etc), or maybe a form of Anti-Cheat that is closing out/freezing the game due to this flag being set (these are obviously just speculation as I have no knowledge of any workings of the game's server). I have been able to fix a single character account affected by this bug, however, I do not know how I did this, I was just messing with java flags for the garbage collector (it's a java game with a custom JVM based on java 9) using wine-10.12 with Windows native Steam, and it somehow got rid of it. The fix also could have been completely unrelated to what I was doing and just a coincidence that the data stored for my player server-side was just amended somehow from the random actions I was preforming in game.
I am going to attempt to reach out to the developers of Stalcraft to see if they can find out what data is being saved on their end that could be causing the bug, hopefully this will help give some clarity as to what's happening, and maybe provide a lead for fixing the main crashing problem addressed above.
TLDR: Don't attempt to load the game using GE-Proton7-55 (or any version older than GE-Proton8-32/Proton 8.0-5) unless you are trying to debug the issue on a character you are okay with possibly losing access to.
TLDR: The game runs with the latest version of Proton Experimental, but will crash randomly (usually after a few hours of play). Older versions that used to work without issue now have a debugger attached error.
The game used to run with no crashes when using Proton 6, however, it required that you first launch the game using the latest Proton Experimental, then version 6 every time you start the game. As of now I can no longer get Proton 6 to start at all, however, 6.4-GE-1 does but within the last few weeks (around November 26 I believe) the game received an update that causes 6.4-GE-1 to trigger a debugger check for the game so it can't be used to play the game any longer.