Steam deck: switching to beta channel and back to stable breaks nstive games

[gwutz]

Your system information

• Steam client version:
• SteamOS version:
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No]
• Opted into SteamOS beta?: [Yes/No]
• Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: [Yes/No]

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Describe what you expected should happen and what did happen.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. switch to beta channel
2. revert to stable
3. native games don't work

I expected that the native games still work. Reinstalling and checking files doesn't gix this issue. I think libraries got updated whick breaks zhese games. Tested games : factorio, half life 2, war thunder.

currently on my phone will bring client version when i am at home

[nadiaholmquist]

They seem to have changed something about the old Ubuntu 12.04 runtime some games run under, and the way it tries to recover when launching a game fails. An admittedly very ugly but working solution is to just delete the Steam runtime.

Kill Steam and run

rm -r /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime*

When you start it again, it will complain about missing libraries as you'd expect but launch regardless and proceed to redownload all the stuff you just deleted, but the proper version of it that works with the stable client.

[McKay42]

Also just got hit by this, extremely frustrating especially when debugging something else and switching between stable/beta multiple times in the process. Aperture Desk Job will immediately crash on launch with a segfault when in this broken state, some games like Half-Life (1) do work though.

So there are only 2 options for now:

1. Stay on beta channel until the issue is fixed on Valve's end
2. rm -r /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime* thanks to @nadiaholmquist