Game not even launching on Steam Deck
I’m trying to get Middle-earth: Shadow of War running on my Steam Deck OLED but I’m hitting a consistent launch failure and I’ve run out of ideas. I bought from GOG if that makes a difference.
What happens
- Game fails to fully launch or crashes before reaching main menu
- Sometimes briefly shows process activity, then silently exits
- No stable crash dialog; just return to Steam library
Things already tried
- Switched between Proton Experimental Proton GE, and older stable Proton builds
- Verified game files / reinstall
- Fully restarted Steam Deck
- Updated Steam client to latest version
- Tried multiple launch configurations
- Disabled ESYNC and FSYNC
- Cleared Proton prefix and forced rebuild
- Attempted running both via Steam compatibility layer and direct Proton launch
- Checked for missing dependencies (no obvious missing packages reported)
At this point I’ve basically exhausted standard Proton troubleshooting and I’m trying to figure out if this is a known compatibility break or something I’m missing.