Arch Linux

skylize

Member

Registered: 2022-04-04

Posts: 19

Missing audio in some Steam games

Problem occurs in both Combat Master and Splitgate.

Install and run game. Looks great, but no sound. Sound otherwise works correctly across system, including other Steam Proton games. Using pipewire-pulse and easyeffects. Game does not appear in the Output panel of Easy Effects GUI.

How do I begin to troubleshoot?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,170

Re: Missing audio in some Steam games

ensure pipewire-alsa,lib32-libpulse,lib32-pipewire and lib32-alsa-plugins are installed.

If those don't help post terminal outputs of a game run and maybe

sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
pactl list sinks
pactl list sink-inputs

Last edited by V1del (2024-11-15 14:25:27)

skylize

Member

Registered: 2022-04-04

Posts: 19

Re: Missing audio in some Steam games

Thanks for the ideas. Those packages were and are installed.

Took a search to find how to run from terminal at all. But I found this, from @x_wing on Steam Community forum, to run a game from the terminal.

steam steam://rungameid/{YourGameID}

In the same thread @Nod provided this banger to get the game id. I just updated it with \endoflines and all caps for the game name, so (other than the awk ) you can read it .

find ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/ \
-maxdepth 1 \
-type f \
-name '*.acf' \
-exec awk -F '"' '/"appid|name/{ printf $4 "|" } END { print "" }' {} \; \
| column -t -s '|' \
| sort -k 2 \
| grep -i <GAME_NAME>

I proceeded to run the game succesfully, but steam immediately disowned it with no output.

skylize

Member

Registered: 2022-04-04

Posts: 19

Re: Missing audio in some Steam games

Also found an alternative launch command. This seems to open the game slightly faster, but still disowns it with no ouput.

steam -applaunch <appID>

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,170

Re: Missing audio in some Steam games

if you just run the normal steam client in the terminal and navigate to your game there then you should get some remnants. Are you running the respective native releases or via proton? does it make a difference? Getting the outputs I asked for when running might already help (chances are if they are native that depending on implementation they might pick a wrong default card and all you'd have to do is move them correctly). Maybe also throw in

aplay -lL #alsa-utils

and potentially check: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam/ … dio_issues

Last edited by V1del (2024-11-15 19:04:03)

skylize

Member

Registered: 2022-04-04

Posts: 19

Re: Missing audio in some Steam games

Ok. Got it. Have to fully exit steam first, so all of steam launches in the terminal with the game. Stuck getting the id into a script `steam-id` and ran this.

$ steam -applaunch "$(steam-id 'Combat Master')"

Paste of applaunch output

Nothing jumps out at me from the output. Anyone else see anything?

skylize

Member

Registered: 2022-04-04

Posts: 19

Re: Missing audio in some Steam games

As far as I know, should be using proton. I didn't even know there was an option to do otherwise, when installed by steam.

skylize

Member

Registered: 2022-04-04

Posts: 19

Re: Missing audio in some Steam games

Thanks. Questions helped.

Turns out as simple as forcing to use latest Proton. Yay

Last edited by skylize (2024-11-15 20:59:26)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,170

Re: Missing audio in some Steam games

I'm assuming the actual issue will be something along an incorrectly defined ALSA conf. Since these games are using unity chances are ffmodex is not properly setup for pulse support.

But yes switching to proton from the native version is also an option. Generally speaking games that have the Steam logo on the supported platforms are linux native and will generally default to that version. But nowadays things often run smoother over proton indeed.

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