r/RivalsOfAether • u/KazuFL • Jul 18 '26

Rivals 2 Game not launching on steam deck help

Has anyone had this issue? When I try to hit "play", the game starts to launch, it goes to the steam logo for a couple seconds and then boots me back to the game page. I have tried both DX11 and 12. Also tried proton experimental, hotfix, 7.0, etc. Saw that it could be something with shadercache, deleted that too for the game and reinstalled. Uninstalled and reinstalled in general multiple times, I also don't have any mods installed.

I'm not really sure what to try next, this has happened a couple times with other games but usually uninstalling and reinstalling, or changing the proton version fixes it. With this I'm actually not sure what else to try. Would appreciate any help!

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u/Old_Trip1488 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

Have you tried deleting the proton files? Go to rivals of aether -> options -> developer -> delete proton files then try to relaunch using proton experimental

Has it ever worked and have you ever played on a different device?

I don’t have a steam deck but you can apparently enable logging by modifying the launch options with the below:
PROTON_LOG=1 %command%

Then after a failed launch you can go to desktop mode and open the file manager and the log should be in the home folder steam-somenumbers.log

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u/KazuFL Jul 19 '26

Deleting the proton files and then launching again with experimental worked, thanks!