Steamwebhelper
Removal guide for software 'steamwebhelper.exe' on Windows (XP, Vista, Win7, Win8 and Windows 10) systems. Tips for getting it away from the hard disk
Fixed several cases of steamwebhelper.exe related crashes; Rich presence features (View Game Info, Join Game, Launch Game) now work on macOS and Linux; Added Command-Left/Right text entry shortcuts and Command-Shift-Z undo/redo shortcuts on macOS; Invite to Watch now appears in friends’ context menus when the user is running a non-Steam game. Today while using Steam, Malewarebytes started to block some sites, while some new Steam windows opend with ads (with the 'powered by dnsunlocker' line) as well as some suspicious 'JavaScript Confirm' window. The Task Manager revealed that three instances of 'SteamWebHelper.exe' were running. Solution 1: Disable Steam Overlay. There is something about Steam Overlay which causes high CPU usage by Steam Client Bootstrapper. Users have experienced that the process’ CPU usage increases vastly when running a game and they managed to figure out that the culprit was Steam Overlay.
How to permanently delete steamwebhelper.exe from your computer:
First, please read this important warning: This article shows a general guide how to remove any file from your computer. It DOES NOT implies that steamwebhelper.exe is harmful! Be aware of removing executable files from your computer without deeper knowledge of what you're doing. First of all, because of steamwebhelper.exe is an executable, there is always a possibility that removing this file MAY damage the operating system or even your data.
Are you still ready to remove steamwebhelper.exe? OK, let's go for it. Here is the guide:
- Create Restore point for Windows (not available in Windows XP). Restore point will help you to revert changes, if something'll go wrong.
- Press F3 key to open standard search window. Than type 'steamwebhelper.exe' into search box. In couple of minutes, seconds if you're lucky, Windows will find all the copies.
- Try to locate program, to which the process steamwebhelper.exe belongs. Than try to uninstall that program in a standard way.
For example, if steamwebhelper.exe is found in folder C:Program FilesDummy game**some subfolder**, it most probably belongs to 'Dummy game' software package. - If your problem persist and you are not able to remove file that way, go to the search results (step 2) and try to manually delete all the occurrences of steamwebhelper.exe.
Note: If the process is running, you will not be able to delete the file. In such situation, you must stop the process via Task manager (right click on Windows task bar, select 'Task manager'. In Task Manager windows, click 'Processes' pane. Than select steamwebhelper.exe and press 'Delete' key). Detailed guide. - Some malware can hide itself under different names (so-called 'clones'). To remove such self-hiding program, use specialized tool 'EasyRemove' - see below
EasyRemove is lightweight and easy-to-use removal tool for steamwebhelper.exe
Download EasyRemove and get your computer fixed within minutes.
You can be also interested in: checking if steamwebhelper.exe is virus or not , how to solve typical problems with steamwebhelper.exe error (or more specific steamwebhelper.exe application error) Solve problems with steamwebhelper.exe not responding. Typical Windows message: steamwebhelper.exe high cpu. How to handle damaged file: steamwebhelper.exe is corrupted.
Main article: steamwebhelper.exe
You know it: the longer you own your computer, the slower it runs and the more often it stucks.
EUROBYTE TOOLS speeds up more than 1 million computers around the world. Try it now:
Security risk rating: N/A
Note: The security risk rating is based on user's opinions. This is not our recommendation or adwice any way. Please use your own mind and think twice :-)
Trojan and malware info: N/A
Typical errors: File not found, An error occured in file, Not responding, Application Error 0x , Howto delete, stop, run, remove and find the file...
Notes:
- N/A is an abbreviation for 'Not available'. That means that now we have no information if this process is harmful or not.
- There is almost unlimited numbers of messages that should appear while you're running the software. We selected only the typical ones here
Related posts for steamwebhelper.exe
See Related Forum Messages: Follow the Links Below to View Complete Thread
Summary: 0 user rated this process.
Nameparts: st eamwebhelper, ste amwebhelper, stea mwebhelper, steam webhelper, steamw ebhelper, steamwe bhelper, steamweb helper, steamwebh elper, steamwebhe lper, steamwebhel per, steamwebhelp er, .User reviews snapshot:
[22:24:06] kms-qad.exe: malware analiz...
[00:22:19] sandisksecureaccessv2_win.exe: how to restore the flasdisk sa...
[20:58:22] dx8vb.dll: the risk is virus ...
[14:18:21] nvspcaps.exe: NVIDIA Server Capture is neces...
[20:01:40] pcacli.dll: If you have a game or anything...
[22:42:35] half_life_2_lost_coast_gdf.dll: halmacpi.dll...
[06:33:34] nvgftraypluginr.dll: NvGFT Plugin.dll ...
[20:21:06] ivms-4200.exe: Process required for IVMS CCTV...
[19:16:19] pclink.exe: Wireless Printing software for...
[00:18:37] mcnetwork.dll: amze...
Warning: Once again about user reviews. Our users can freely add their reviews about whatever process they want. We, of course, purify and filter raged words. However, do not trust everything. We have no time to review any user's sentence. So the information provided in user reviews CAN be innacurate. Or misprinted. Or anything else. Are you adult, aren't you? We believe in your mind.
Windows process DB: sptd.syscfp.exentkrnlpa.exehidfind.execonsent.exeswitchboard.exewerfault.exetrustedinstaller.exegrpconv.exefunshioninstall.exebservice.exedriver.exedf.execonhost.execli.execfpupdat.execcsvchst.exeavp.exeavastsvc.exeatiedxx.exedevldr16.exelogomedia translatedotnet server.exekhalmnpr.exeuwdf.exewf2k.exegui.exeperstray.exeultramon.exexfire.exeultramontaskbar.exe

New: Windows dynamic link library DB: basics.dll, ver. , bass.dll, ver. , batinfex.dll, ver. , batmeter.dll, BATMETER.DLL, batmeter.dll, batmeter.dll, batmgrdll.dll, batplugin.ni.dll, batt.dll, batt.dll, battery.dll, batteryinfo.dll, batteryutl64.dll, bavbh.dll, dllhost etc...
Available version list table, select the version you have on your PC:
Security | MD5 or checksum | Version | Location | Size |
N/A | ee1b3ad7 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 83d6ecc3 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 7b23bf97 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 56e52004 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 9e3a4a0 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | beaad7d9 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | bf617d30 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 8baf7064 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 27a997e9 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | fcb874cc | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 18810efd | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | ca901e67 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 7d93039c | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | ebc87731 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 7f2d32cb | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 8448f613 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 83ba30c0 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | dcb12b03 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 36ebcc51 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 6d932d2c | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | fe215a7c | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 3a33a91d | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | cc6ca785 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 2d6c79ac | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | c6cff7c4 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | ccb9804c | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | f8a4e80e | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | e0b8e96a | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 13cd95ec | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | d7039052 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 7b851192 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 90858024 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | a352d942 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 816bd41e | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | beaaf369 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 7118a971 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | ece65f38 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B | |
N/A | 87eab569 | 01.00.00.01 | 0 B |
Retypes: wxe, rxe, eze, ece, exw, exr, eexe, exxe, exee, ateamwebhelper, dteamwebhelper, sreamwebhelper, syeamwebhelper, stwamwebhelper, stramwebhelper, stesmwebhelper, steanwebhelper, stea,webhelper, steamqebhelper, steameebhelper, steamwwbhelper, steamwrbhelper, steamwevhelper, steamwenhelper, steamwebgelper, steamwebjelper, steamwebhwlper, steamwebhrlper, steamwebhekper, steamwebhe;per, steamwebheloer, steamwebhel[er, steamwebhelpwr, steamwebhelprr, steamwebhelpee, steamwebhelpet, ssteamwebhelper, stteamwebhelper, steeamwebhelper, steaamwebhelper, steammwebhelper, steamwwebhelper, steamweebhelper, steamwebbhelper, steamwebhhelper, steamwebheelper, steamwebhellper, steamwebhelpper, steamwebhelpeer, steamwebhelperr, teamwebhelper, seamwebhelper, stamwebhelper, stemwebhelper, steawebhelper, steamebhelper, steamwbhelper, steamwehelper, steamwebelper, steamwebhlper, steamwebheper, steamwebheler, steamwebhelpr, steamwebhelpe, steamvebhelper, zteamwebhelper, sdeamwebhelper,
Disclaimer
This web site and all information written here is for information purposes only, WITHOUT ANY VARANTY. YOU ARE USING THIS PAGES ON YOU OWN RISK. You should always verify the accuracy of information provided on this page. We pay a big attention to provide you with the correct information. However, many spyware and malware programs use filenames of usual, non-malware processes and DLLs. If we have included information about steamwebhelper.exe that is inaccurate, we would appreciate your help by getting us know about your user review. Also, web links to software and DLL vendors are provided just for your conform, and we cannot guarantee its accuracy nor relevance with DLL or process listed on this page. We are not affiliated with this pages. We are not responsible for misprints on this site or changes occured since this page was published. The product, software and operating system names mentioned on this web site, can be copyrighted and registered trademarks of their owners.
Introduction
- Make sure that you have followed Steam#Installation.
- If the Steam client / a game is not starting and/or you have error message about a library, read #Steam runtime and see #Debugging shared libraries.
- If the issue is related to networking, make sure that you have forwarded the required ports for Steam.
- If the issue is about a game, consult Steam/Game-specific troubleshooting.
Relevant online resources /
- ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux – Issue tracking for the Steam for Linux client
Steam runtime
Steam for Linux ships with its own set of libraries called the Steam runtime. By default Steam launches all Steam Applications within the runtime environment.The Steam runtime is located at ~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/
.
If you mix the Steam runtime libraries with system libraries you will run into binary incompatibility issues, see steam-for-linux issue #4768.Binary incompatibility can lead to the Steam client and games not starting (manifesting as a crash, as hanging or silently returning), audio issues and various other problems.
The steam package offers three ways to launch Steam:
steam-runtime
(aliassteam
), which overrides runtime libraries known to cause problems via theLD_PRELOAD
environment variable (see ld.so(8)).steam-native
, see #Steam native runtime/usr/lib/steam/steam
, the default Steam launch script
As the Steam runtime libraries are older they can lack newer features, e.g. the OpenAL version of the Steam runtime lacks HRTF and surround71 support.
Steam native runtime
Steamwebhelper Location
The steam-native
script launches Steam with the STEAM_RUNTIME=0
environment variable making it ignore its runtime and only use system libraries.
The steam-native-runtime meta package depends on over 120 packages to pose a native replacement of the Steam runtime, some games may however still require additional packages. You can also use the Steam native runtime without steam-native-runtime by manually installing just the packages you need. See #Finding missing runtime libraries.
Debugging shared libraries
To see the shared libraries required by a program or a shared library run the ldd
command on it, see ldd(1). The LD_LIBRARY_PATH
and LD_PRELOAD
environment variables can alter which shared libraries are loaded, see ld.so(8). To correctly debug a program or shared library it is therefore important that these environment variables in your debug environment match the environment you wish to debug.
If you figure out a missing library you can use pacman or pkgfile to search for packages that contain the missing library.
Finding missing game libraries
If a game fails to start, a possible reason is that it is missing required libraries. You can find out what libraries it requests by running ldd game_executable
. game_executable
is likely located somewhere in ~/.steam/root/steamapps/common/
. Please note that most of these 'missing' libraries are actually already included with Steam, and do not need to be installed globally.
Finding missing runtime libraries
If individual games or Steam itself is failing to launch when using steam-native
you are probably missing libraries. To find the required libraries run:
Alternatively, run Steam with steam-runtime
and use the following command to see which non-system libraries Steam is using (not all of these are part of the Steam runtime):
Debugging Steam
The Steam launcher redirects its stdout and stderr to /tmp/dumps/USER_stdout.txt
.This means you do not have to run Steam from the command-line to see that output.
It is possible to debug Steam to gain more information which could be useful to find out why something does not work.
You can set DEBUGGER
environment variable with one of gdb
, cgdb
, valgrind
, callgrind
, strace
and then start steam
.
For example with gdb
gdb
will open, then type run
which will start steam
and once crash happens you can type backtrace
to see call stack.
Runtime issues
Segmentation fault when disabling runtime
- steam-for-linux issue #3863
As per the bug report above, Steam crashes with the following error message when run with STEAM_RUNTIME=0
:
Steamwebhelper.exe
This happens because steamclient.so
is linked to libudev.so.0
(lib32-libudev0AUR[broken link: package not found]) which conflicts with libudev.so.1
(lib32-systemd).
A proposed workaround is to copy Steam's packaged 32-bit versions of libusb and libgudev to /usr/lib32
:
Notice that the workaround is necessary because the bug affects systems with lib32-libgudev and lib32-libusb installed.
Alternatively it has been successful to prioritize the loading of the libudev.so.1 (see comment on the same issue):
'GLBCXX_3.X.XX' not found when using Bumblebee
This error is likely caused because Steam packages its own out of date libstdc++.so.6
. See #Finding missing runtime libraries about working around the bad library. See also steam-for-linux issue 3773.
Steam>Warning: failed to init SDL thread priority manager: SDL not found
Solution:
Game crashes immediately
This is likely due to #Steam runtime issues, see #Debugging shared libraries.
Disabling the in-game Steam Overlay in the game properties might help.
And finally, if those don't work, you should check Steam's output for any error from the game. You may encounter the following:
munmap_chunk(): invalid pointer
free(): invalid pointer
In these cases, try replacing the libsteam_api.so
file from the problematic game with one of a game that works. This error usually happens for games that were not updated recently when Steam runtime is disabled. This error has been encountered with AYIM, Bastion and Monaco.
Game and Steam crashes after game start
If the following error is output:
moving the incompatible lib can be a workaround.
Version `CURL_OPENSSL_3` not found
This is because curl alone is not compatible with previous versions. You need to install the compatibility libraries:
One of the following messages may show up:
You need to install either libcurl-compat or lib32-libcurl-compat and link the compatibility library manually:
Steam webview/game browser not working in native runtime (Black screen)
Since the new Steam Friends UI update, the client webview isn't working correctly with the native-runtime.
It can be solved preloading glib libraries; Those don't require libpcre and selinux to work.
Alternatively, you may create a symbolic link to the native Arch libpcre library.
Steam: An X Error occurred
When using an NVidia GPU and proprietary drivers, Steam may fail to start and (if run from the terminal) produce errors of the form:
Install the package lib32-nvidia-utils (or lib32-nvidia-390xx-utilsAUR if using an old GPU).
If lib32-nvidia-utils is installed, ensure that the package version matches nvidia with
You may need to change which mirrors you are using to install the driversif they do not match.
If you're using AMD, have enabled 10-bit color depth, and are having this problem. You will likely need to disable 10-bit color depth.
Audio issues
If the sections below do not address the issue, using the #Steam native runtime might help.
Configure PulseAudio
Games that explicitly depend on ALSA can break PulseAudio. Follow the directions for PulseAudio#ALSA to make these games use PulseAudio instead.
No audio or 756 Segmentation fault
First #Configure PulseAudio and see if that resolves the issue. If you do not have audio in the videos which play within the Steam client, it is possible that the ALSA libraries packaged with Steam are not working.
Attempting to playback a video within the steam client results in an error similar to:
A workaround is to rename or delete the alsa-lib
folder and the libasound.so.*
files. They can be found at:
An alternative workaround is to add the libasound.so.*
library to the LD_PRELOAD
environment variable:
If audio still won't work, adding the Pulseaudio-libs to the LD_PRELOAD
variable may help:
Be advised that their names may change over time. If so, it is necessary to take a look in
and find the new libraries and their versions.
Bugs reports have been filed: #3376 and #3504
FMOD sound engine
The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.
The FMOD audio middleware package is a bit buggy, and as a result games using it may have sound problems.
It usually occurs when an unused sound device is used as default for ALSA. See Advanced Linux Sound Architecture#Set the default sound card.
- Affected games: Hotline Miami, Hotline Miami 2, Transistor
PulseAudio & OpenAL: Audio streams can't be moved between devices
If you use PulseAudio and cannot move an audio stream between sinks, it might be because recent OpenAL versions default to disallow audio streams from being moved. Try to add the following to your ~/.alsoftrc
:
Steam client issues
Cannot add library folder because of missing execute permissions
If you add another Steam library folder on another drive, you might get the error message:
Make sure you are mounting the filesystem with the correct flags in your /etc/fstab
, usually by adding exec
to the list of mount parameter. The parameter must occur after any user
or users
parameter since these can imply noexec
.
This error might also occur if your library folder does not contain a steamapps
directory. Previous versions used SteamApps
instead, so ensure the name is fully lowercase.
This error can also occur because of Steam runtime issues and may be fixed following the #Finding missing runtime libraries section or due to no space being left on the device. For debugging purposes it might be useful to run Steam from the console and observe the log.
Unusually slow download speed
If your Steam apps (games, software…) download speed through the client is unusually slow, but browsing the Steam store and streaming videos is unaffected, installing a DNS cache program, such as dnsmasq can help [1].
Something else that might help would be disabling IPv6[2].
'Needs to be online' error
This article or section needs expansion.
If the Steam launcher refuses to start and you get an error saying: 'Fatal Error: Steam needs to be online to update' while you are online, then there might be issues with name resolving.
Try to install lib32-libcurl-compat or nss-mdns or lib32-nsslib32-glu or lib32-dbus.
This may also be as simple as DNS resolution not correctly working and is not always obvious since modern browsers will user their own DNS servers. Follow Domain name resolution.
If DNS resolution works but the Steam launcher still shows the same error message, enabling DNS caching e.g. via the 'Name Service Caching Daemon' has shown to work around this issue:
It’s unclear what exactly running nscd
does to make it work again though. Please check the talk page for more info.
Steam forgets password
- Related: steam-for-linux#5030
Steam for Linux has a bug which causes it to forget the password of some users.
As a workaround, after logging in to Steam, run
This will make the file read-only so Steam cannot modify it, and thus not log you out.
Preventing crash memory dumps
Every time Steam crashes, it writes a memory dump to /tmp/dumps/
. If Steam falls into a crash loop, the dump files can become quite large. When /tmp
is mounted as tmpfs, memory and swap file can be consumed needlessly.
To prevent this, link /tmp/dumps/
to /dev/null
:
Or alternatively, create and modify permissions on /tmp/dumps
. Then Steam will be unable to write dump files to the directory.
This also has the added benefit of Steam not uploading these dumps to Valve's servers.
Steam license problem with playing videos
Steam uses Google's Widevine DRM for some videos. If it is not installed you will get the following error:
To solve this issue follow the Streaming Videos on Steam support page.
No context menu for joining/inviting friends
Since the new Steam Friends UI update, it may be the case that in the right-click menu the entries for 'Join Game', 'Invite to Game' and 'View Game Info' are missing.
In order to fix this, it maybe be necessary to install lsof.
Slow and unresponsive user interface
If you experience extremely slow and sluggish performance when using the Steam client it might help to disable the option 'Enable GPU accelerated rendering in web views' under the 'Interface' tab in the Steam client settings.
Steam fails to start correctly
One troubleshooting step is to run
This can fix various issues that come with a broken install.
Missing taskbar menu
If clicking your steam taskbar icon doesn't give you a menu, it may be necessary to install the libappindicator-gtk2 and lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 packages and restart steam.
'Your browser does not support the minimum set of features required to watch this broadcast' error
- Related: steam-for-linux issue 6780
If you get an error stating 'Your browser does not support the minimum set of features required to watch this broadcast' when attempting to watch a stream/broadcast try the following two troubleshooting steps:
- Navigate to Community -> Broadcasts. If the page displays 'Updating Steam' wait a few minutes to see if the process completes and cancel it after a while in case it does not. Now test if you are able to watch broadcasts, e.g. by clicking on one of the ones display under Community -> Broadcasts.
- Start a broadcast while in Big Picture mode (View -> Big Picture Mode). If a broadcast starts fine while in Big Picture mode check if it still works after switching back to the main interface.
Using system titlebar and frame
Currently steam client tries to manage its windows itself, but it does it improperly, see steam-for-linux#1040. As a workaround you can use steamwm project. Run steam like this: ./steamwm.cpp steam
. Also the project provides a skin that removes unnative control buttons and frame, but leaves default skin decorations.
Steam Remote Play issues
See Steam#Steam Remote Play.
Remote Play does not work from Arch Linux host to Arch Linux guest
Chances are you are missing lib32-libcanberra. Once you install that, it should work as expected.
With that, Steam should no longer crash when trying to launch a game through Remote Play.
Hardware decoding not available
Remote Play hardware decoding uses vaapi
, but steam requires libva2_32bit
, where as Arch defaults to 64bit.
As a basic set, this is libva and lib32-libva. Intel graphics users will also require both libva-intel-driver and lib32-libva-intel-driver.
For more information about vaapi see hardware video acceleration.
It may also be necessary to remove the steam runtime version of libva, in order to force it to use system libraries. The current library in use can be found by using:
If this shows locations in ~/.local/Share/steam
steam is still using it's packaged version of libva. This can be rectified by deleting the libva library files at ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libva*
, so that steam falls back to the system libraries.
Big Picture Mode minimizes itself after losing focus
This can occur when you play a game via Remote Play or if you have a multi-monitor setup and move the mouse outside of BPM's window. To prevent this, set the following environment variable and restart Steam
See also the steam-for-linux issue 4769.
Other issues
Steam Library in NTFS partition
If your Steam library resides in NTFS partition it is probable that games residing there could not start.
The trouble is that Wine uses a colon in it's $WINE_PREFIX/dosdevices folder, and NTFS seems to have trouble supporting this.
Workaround: move the 'steamapps/common/Proton 3.7' and 'steamapps/compatdata' to a non-NTFS drive, then create symbolic link in their original locations.
Wrong ELF class
If you see this message in Steam's console output
you can safely ignore it. It is not really any error: Steam includes both 64- and 32-bit versions of some libraries and only one version will load successfully. This 'error' is displayed even when Steam (and the in-game overlay) is working perfectly.
Multiple monitors setup
This article or section needs expansion.
A setup with multiple monitors may prevent games from starting. Try to disable all additional displays, and then run a game. You can enable them after the game successfully started.
Also you can try running Steam with this environment variable set:
Text is corrupt or missing
Before reading following, try install lib32-fontconfig, ttf-liberation and wqy-zenhei(for Asian characters), then restart Steam to see whether the problem is solved.
Installing steam-fontsAUR may work, but it also may lead to corrupt font rendering in steam, like chopped letter.
The Steam Support instructions for Windows seem to work on Linux also.
You can install them via the steam-fontsAUR package, or manually by downloading and installingSteamFonts.zip.
SetLocale('en_US.UTF-8') fails at game startup or typing non-ASCII characters does not work in the Steam client
You need to generate the en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
locale. See Locale#Generating locales.

Missing libc
This could be due to a corrupt Steam executable. Check the output of:
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:
If it doesn't, 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.
Games do not launch on older Intel hardware
- source
On older Intel hardware which doesn't support OpenGL 3, such as Intel GMA chips or Westmere CPUs, games may immediately crash when run. It appears as a gameoverlayrenderer.so
error in /tmp/dumps/mobile_stdout.txt
, but looking in /tmp/gameoverlayrenderer.log
it shows a GLXBadFBConfig error.
This can be fixed, by forcing the game to use a later version of OpenGL than it wants.Add MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.1 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=140
to your launch options.
Mesa: Game does not launch, complaining about OpenGL version supported by the card
Some games are badly programmed, to use any OpenGL version above 3.0.With Mesa, an application has to request a specific core profile.If it doesn't make such a request, only OpenGL 3.0 and lower are available.
This can be fixed, by forcing the game to use a version of OpenGL it actually needs.Add MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.1 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=410
to your launch options.
2K games do not run on XFS partitions
This article or section needs expansion.
If you are running 2K games such as Civilization 5 on XFS partitions, then the game may not start or run properly due to how the game loads files as it starts.[4]
Steam controller not being detected correctly
See Gamepad#Steam Controller.
Steam controller makes a game crash
See Gamepad#Steam Controller makes a game crash or not recognized.
Steam hangs on 'Installing breakpad exception handler...'
You have an Nvidia GPU and Steam has the following output:
Then nothing else happens. Ensure you have the correct drivers installed as well as their 32-bit versions (the 64-bit and 32-bit variants have to have the same versions): see NVIDIA#Installation.
Killing standalone compositors when launching games
Further to this, utilising the %command%
switch, you can kill standalone compositors (such as Xcompmgr or Compton) - which can cause lag and tearing in some games on some systems - and relaunch them after the game ends by adding the following to your game's launch options.
Replace compton
in the above command with whatever your compositor is. You can also add -options to %command%
or compton
, of course.
Steam will latch on to any processes launched after %command%
and your Steam status will show as in game. So in this example, we run the compositor through nohup
so it is not attached to Steam (it will keep running if you close Steam) and follow it with an ampersand so that the line of commands ends, clearing your Steam status.
Symbol lookup error using DRI3
Steam outputs this error and exits.
To work around this, run Steam with LIBGL_DRI3_DISABLE=1
, disabling DRI3 for Steam.
Launching games on Nvidia optimus laptops
To be able to play games which require using Nvidia GPU (for example, Hitman 2016) on optimus enabled laptop, you should start game with primusrun prefix in launch options. Otherwise, game will not work.
Find the game in steam library, right click -> Properties -> SET LAUNCH OPTIONS. Change options to
primusrun %command%
Running steam with primusrum used to work. While steam has changed some behavior that now running steam with primusrun would not have effect on launching games. As a result, you need to set launch options for each game (and you do NOT have to run steam with primusrun).
For primusrun, VSYNC is enabled by default it could result in a mouse input delay lag, slightly decrease performance and in-game FPS might be locked to a refresh rate of a monitor/display.In order to disable VSYNC for primusrun default value of option vblank_mode needs to be overridden by environment variable.
vblank_mode=0 primusrun %command%
Same with optirun that uses primus as a bridge.
vblank_mode=0 optirun -b primus %command%
If that did not work try:

LD_PRELOAD='libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1' __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 optirun %command%
For more details see Bumblebee#Primusrun mouse delay (disable VSYNC).
HiDPI
HiDPI support should work out of the box, although on some systems it is necessary to force it setting the GDK_SCALE=
environment variable to set the desired scale factor.
Protocol support under KDE Plasma
If you are getting an error after running a game through web browser (or executing the link through xdg-open)
Go to System Settings -> Applications -> File Associations, add new, select inode
group and name it vnd.kde.service.steam
, then under Application Preference Order you have to add Steam. Apply changes, It should be working now.
The game crashes when using Steam Linux Runtime - Soldier
Since Proton 5.13 Steam uses the Steam Linux Runtime - Soldier by default. Some games crash when using it.
To bypass it, you can:
- Manually build a proton without the Steam Runtime, or install proton-nativeAUR
- Modify ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_soldier/_v2-entry-point
Replace script with:
Games Running with Proton 5.13 have no Internet Connectivity
If you are using systemd-networkd with systemd-resolved as your network manager, you must create the resolv.conf symlink as described in Step 1 here.
