Steam/Games troubleshooting

Texture compression
Many games, especially those that use the Source engine, require S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) support. Without S3TC support, these games will usually have black or missing textures, or fail to start.


 * Enable S3TC support:

The following USE flags are required for :

Install the package.

With Portage:

With Paludis:

Next, confirm if S3TC support is enabled with, which is provided by the package:

If S3TC support is not enabled, ensure that the VIDEO_CARDS variable in is set to the correct value, and update the video driver to most recent version.

If S3TC support is enabled, but games fail to start with the following error:

This system does not support the OpenGL extension GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc

Force enable S3TC support with:

If nouveau drivers are being used, installing may be required to fix the above error.

With Portage:

With Paludis:

Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

 * Gearbox's SHiFT service assumes the underlying distribution is Ubuntu, which stores its SSL certificates in, whereas Gentoo (by default) stores them in . This difference prevents the redemption of SHiFT codes on Gentoo. To workaround this issue, add  to the launch options in.

DiRT Showdown

 * If the launcher fails to start, enable texture compression support.


 * If an Intel GPU is being used and the launcher fails to start with the following error:

Unfortunately your machine doesn't meet the full OpenGL 4.1 requirements so the game may not perform correctly

Add  to the launch options in. Intel Broadwell and Skylake based GPUs also require  to be added to the launch options.

Dota 2

 * If black textures are visible and an older (<9.1.6) is installed, update  to a recent version.


 * If black textures are visible and a recent is installed, build  with the   USE flag.


 * If a red screen is visible during startup and textures are missing in-game, enable texture compression support.


 * If some textures are not clickable (e.g. the character can not move at the fountain when the right mouse button is clicked), verify the integrity of the game cache.

Left 4 Dead 2

 * If black textures are visible, enable texture compression support.

Rust (legacy)

 * If the launcher fails to start, add  to the launch options in.

Sid Meier's Civilization V

 * If a black screen is visible and the introduction music is audible during startup, change the value of FSResID :

The correct value for FSResID appears to be system dependent, and may require setting different values before working.

Starbound

 * If the launcher fails to start with the following error:

This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "xcb".

Available platform plugins are: xcb.

Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Add  to the launch options in.

Stealth Bastard Deluxe

 * If the package is not installed, Stealth Bastard Deluxe will segfault.

With Portage:

With Paludis:

Stealth Bastard Deluxe specifically requests the fonts /, which can be checked for availability with. Otherwise, add the fonts to the font path, or create a font alias:

Team Fortress 2

 * If a black screen is visible for 1-2 seconds, add  to the launch options in.

Incorrect sound card selected
Transistor uses the FMOD engine, which can sometimes detect the wrong default device. Determine the index of the card to be used with 's output, then put that index into. For example, to use the first card detected by ALSA (index 0):

Relaunch Transistor and the chosen card should be outputting its sound.

Unity-based games

 * Many games that utilize the Unity3D engine released in late 2015 or later either display a black screen for a few seconds and segfault, or run but without sound. To workaround this issue, disable the Steam runtime for the game by adding  to the game's launch options. It may also be possible to run the game without Steam, but some games will force the use of Steam and keep failing.

X3: Terran Conflict and X3: Albion Prelude

 * If red, green and blue stripes are visible, or the launcher fails to start, enable texture compression support.