Fedora workstation 42. Steam flatpak. Same behavior no matter which proton I use. 4090 using the rpm fusion team’s package

Behavior: I boot up. I fire off a game from steam flatpak. Game 100% worked fine yesterday. Today something updated, so I get “processing vulkan shaders” let it finish. Game starts - slow af. Game works, but it’s like the video card isn’t there, and the game is using my CPU’s integrated GPU (I literally think this is what’s happening). The settings are way too high so it’s a lag fest - if I turn them way down, everything is fine (at 320x200 LOL)

Ok so here’s the fix. I update the system. That’s it. Update, reboot, everything works perfectly. (Interestingly, vulkan shaders need to be processed again). My question is WHY? Shouldn’t I be able to not update and things still work? I’m not talking like I haven’t updated in years. Sometimes it happens within days. It’s not the end of the world - I was going to update anyways - but it’s annoying.

Any thoughts on what to check and maybe tweak? Thanks.