I have the problem. I usually just downgrade one or two versions
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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I see you made a comment in https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/issues/1913 . Did you try vkcube like someone earlier in that issue? And the other workarounds like --expose-wayland?
Also what version of gamescope? And you don't happen to be running steam as a flatpak do you?
EDIT: they JUST released a new version https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/compare/3.16.14...3.16.15 . So if you are having issues downgrading might be worth a try, but I haven't been able to reproduce the issues you are having.
Also, I know it sounds weird for a linux machine, but update and restart just to rule anything weird out. I've had steam and steam related applications leave around weird state, processes, etc. before and restarting is an easy way to clear that all out and start fresh, eliminating variables.
I have tried --expose-wayland. I have tried normal gamescope and u roled back to an old version. I also tried gamescope-git (I think it's called). I will retry the expose Wayland again today though with other versions as I did not do that.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope
might go through some of those troubleshooting steps and make sure you have drm kernel modeset.
one other thing you might try (at end of the page) by setting LD_PRELOAD=”” with the command which can at least rule out features that sometimes break on certain games. I've had game recording and overlay cause similar issues and could only launch after disabling those in game settings.
also might not need gamescope? mesa 25.1+ and proton 10+ have a lot of the features built in and I've not noticed much if any performance difference. now i only use gamescope if i run into issues and usually only if protondb shows consensus that you need to use gamescope or specific workarounds.
The biggest reason why I wish to keep using gamescope at the moment is because I have an external capture card I use. My main monitor is 1440P I wish to render in 1440P but the capture card when I set to replicate my main (and only monitor besides capture card) it for some reason forces all games to render in 4k and if I try to change it it just breaks and is no longer full screen and notifications (steam and such) pop up in the middle of the screen. If there is another way to do this would love to know gamescope is just how I 'solved' it myself.
Does it launch when you don't use any commandline arguments? If yes you can then add them back one by one to find which one is making problems.
Yes it launches with no commands. but it does not with just
gamescope -f -W 2560 -H 1440 -r 144 -- %command%
What happens if you just do
gamescope -- %command%
Out of curiosity, what happens if you try to run gamescope from the terminal to just run anything (not even having proton in the mix).
For example:
gamescope -f -W 2560 -H 1440 -r 144 --force-grab-cursor --mangoapp -- glxgears
If this doesn't run, you should get some log lines at least to let you know whats on fire with gamescope.
this loaded fine (pretty cool never even knew I could do this...)
Looking at the logs thought I see two errors even though it ran.
[gamescope] [Error] vulkan: vkGetPhysicalDeviceFormatProperties2 returned zero modifiers for DRM format 0x38344241 (VkResult: 0)
[gamescope] [Error] vulkan: vkGetPhysicalDeviceFormatProperties2 returned zero modifiers for DRM format 0x38344258 (VkResult: 0)
Well sorry. If it works for glxgears there is probably some other weird interaction happening with Steam + Gamescope + Game launching. (you could try to add glxgears as a non steam game to further push the boundaries of if anything will run from steam).
I don't have an nvidia GPU so I couldn't even possibly comment on the state of that situation, but I wish you the best of luck.
Thanks for trying :)