this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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What Steam does differently than Lutris? (programming.dev)
submitted 3 months ago by muhyb@programming.dev to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
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Hi there!

I have a situation about a game that has problems with running via Steam but the same binaries run fine via Lutris.

ProtonDB page of the said game: https://www.protondb.com/app/214590 (Fairy Bloom Freesia)

I tried it years ago, probably around Proton 4-2 times, and I was getting the very same error I get today if I run the game from Steam.

DirectX error: StrecthRect is invalid call

I don't know what Steam does differently but in the meantime it causes this error. Probably it's game's own problem at some circumstances (regarding it's a custom Japanese engine) and what Steam does triggers this error. I'm using Glorious Eggroll's Proton 10-15 on both Steam and Lutris, that's why I think it's related to Steam client itself.

Also tried WINE and if I run the game with regular WINE from my system, the performance would be really poor, but at least it runs.

So, I'm trying to understand what would be the difference. Do we know what might Steam client does behind the doors? According to the latest reviews on ProtonDB, the game should run fine. That's why I wanted to try it again after so many years.

I tried every Proton version and I get the same error almost on every version. For some, it crashes right away. Launch options such as PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 do not help either.

Any ideas what should I check or try?

I'm on EndeavourOS, my Steam is a native package.

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[–] hisao@ani.social 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I believe Steam has a mechanism for applying additional flags to Proton. On ProtonDB, some games had recommended flags mentioned in user comments to improve performance on Linux. In some cases, these flags were later included by default for those specific games, so users wouldn’t need to configure them manually. I’m not sure exactly how this process works, or whether the flags are set by the developers themselves or by specific Steam maintainers. So the problem might be that Steam has flags that Lutris doesn't or vice versa. Try to check game folder in Steam and look for files that might include those flags.

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 1 points 3 months ago

That's a sound advice. However I checked the game files and other than steam_api.dll and wuvorbis.dll there is only one other dll which is d3dx9_36.dll. So when I run the game via Lutris, it probably just doesn't use steam_api.dll. But I don't think this issue is related to that because I can already disable Steam overlay etc, and that doesn't do anything. Other than that I don't see anything unusual there.