Game Screen Flickering and Desktop Freeze with proton-cachyos (Post-20250906 Versions)

[cataldoc]

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: World of Warcraft

System Information

• GPU: RX 580
• Video driver version: Mesa 25.2.5-cachyos1.2
• Kernel version: 6.17.3-3-cachyos
• Link to full system information report as [Gist]: https://gist.github.com/cataldoc/8b3ef60120c8d76d5c6f88ff088715d5
• Proton version: 1760639942 cachyos-10.0-20251015-native

I confirm:

• that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

• Log from Proton-CachyOS Native: https://paste.cachyos.org/p/791c44d.log

Symptoms

When launching World of Warcraft with the latest proton-cachyos versions (any version after proton-cachyos-1:10.0.20250906-1-x86_64_v3), the game window opens but immediately causes severe screen flickering across the entire desktop. KDE Plasma becomes completely unresponsive, requiring the game process to be killed from a terminal to regain control of the system.

Video of the issue: https://files.catbox.moe/mmgker.MOV

Downgrading to proton-cachyos-1:10.0.20250906-1-x86_64_v3 resolves the issue completely.

Affected Versions

All proton-cachyos releases after 1:10.0.20250906-1 exhibit this issue.

proton-cachyos-1:10.0.20250906-1-x86_64_v3 works correctly with identical launch parameters.

Launch Parameters

PROTON_USE_NTSYNC=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1

Reproduction

Launch World of Warcraft using any proton-cachyos version newer than 1:10.0.20250906-1 from either Lutris or Steam

Apply the launch parameters listed above

Game window opens → entire desktop begins flickering → KDE becomes unresponsive

Platforms Tested

Lutris: Issue occurs

Steam: Issue occurs

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[OneOfOne]

I've always had that with proton, but with battle.net not wow. always ended up using normal wine.

[loathingKernel]

@cataldoc the checklist steps are not optional. While using the steam linux runtime or native versions here is very likely unrelated, I do need to know if this happens with Valve's Proton Experimental. If it does happen with Proton Experimental, then it should be reported to them too. It's possible to test with Experimental through lutris or by adding the launcher as non-steam game to the Steam client.

[cataldoc]

My bad... yes, it happens with proton-experimental too, I just tried

https://gist.github.com/cataldoc/7aae752c238d2c8cc45c6aab6d36e04e

[loathingKernel]

Thanks for checking. I'll have a look to see what might have changed between versions, but this might be faster if Valve is made aware of it. In any case, can you please try with WINE_DISABLE_GAMESCOPE_MAX_SIZE_HACK=1 and see if that fixes it?

This is probably an intentional change from their side and they are aware of the side-effects.

[cataldoc]

Tnx for looking into it :-)

I tried with both WINE_DISABLE_GAMESCOPE_MAX_SIZE_HACK=1 and WINE_DISABLE_GAMESCOPE_MAX_SIZE_HACK=0

No changes, the issue is still present with any of the two options

If you think it will be helpful I can try to figure out where to report it to Valve and open an issue there

[loathingKernel]

Sure, go ahead. I will be looking into this to the extend I can, but having something official is always better. You can report the issue here https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton.

[cataldoc]

opened ValveSoftware#9117