I have had issues like this before, a game I have played multiples times, out of nowhere no updates or anything just stops working on my lutris library and I can never fix it, do you all have some troubleshooting tips or know some troubleshooting guides?
Every time I’ve had this happen to me or anyone else I knew, its because the wine version changed which can sometimes cause issues with the wine prefix.
I know you said no updates, but just in case you didn’t factor in the version of proton/wine updating, that could be what makes it seem like its randomly happening.
The easiest fix is to blow away the wine prefix, but depending on the game that could also blow away any SAVE DATA or mods installed for that game. And depending on how you have lutrus setup, multiple games could be setup to use the same wine prefix if they’re using the same version of wine.
If you end up thinking this might be the issue, and you have trouble finding a guide, just reply and I’ll try to find a good one for you.
I usually move the whole game folder elsewhere, delete the prefix, then start a new one and drag it back in. When I install the game launcher it detects the game on the drive.
When I have had something previously working to not working with no known changes, it has usually been failing hardware, for me.
Keep an eye on your heat - both in the PC itself, and in the charging cord (if a laptop).
Did you update your system without restarting? It’s usually the problem when games stop working on my machine.
I am still regularly surprised by what a restart can fix on every OS I have ever used or supported.
This gets me every single time.
I update my system and suddenly everything goes semi-haywire and refuses to work. My stupid ass has spent hours (and literally broken systems before) just trying to ‘fix’ it.
Running it in the terminal usually spits out something useful.
Since this happens to you often, I’d strongly recommend ruling out hardware issues. First, check you RAM with Memtest86 or similiar tool for a few runs. Bad RAM will eventually corrupt your file system, so do it before you lose any important data. Then check your storage health, and while at it, if your games are not installed on a ext4 file system, make sure you create one for testing. Last, make sure you have enough space on your game library partition.
Next, gather data. Are the games that fail windows or native titles? Wine sometimes crashes and leaves processes running and running the application again fails. Check with ‘ps’ command or your favorite GUI tool. Check the logs of your game launcher, wine and the game it self. System log aka journal may have some info too. Journal is unlikely to have useful info in this case, but still it’s worth to take a look incase it’s some wierd issue with network, GPU, etc.
Lutris forums have troubleshooting section. There is a sticky post “Please read before asking for help”, that covers the details about logs. Other threads there will be good sources to learn.
I hope you’re able to fix your issue.
If you wanna be thorough:
Right-click the game in lutris > Configure > Runner options > Output debugging info > Enabled. -> Output of Lutris > Game > View last game’s log or run in in terminal and sent the output of terminal.
Skim through the output for any indictations of crashes, errors, dumps. Try deciphering it yourself first than punch it in your browser.
What I usually try before going into debugging is changing the version of wine I am using. Its quite useful installing Protonplus via flathub or the AUR (though there are a lot more community packages for fedora/bazzit too)
Install Proton-GE via Protonplus and set it as your default for Lutris -> Restart Lutris > Try starting the game again.
Lil word of warning
I also started noticing games not launching via Lutris recently and since I essentially only use it to launch Steam games and the occasional Heroic Games Launcher game, I stopped using it altogether, only later I found out that the lead dev apparently started using a lot more AI vibe coding when pushing updates. Now I dont know to what extend since the developer decided to scrub all signatures made by Claude but thats just my little conspiracy theory.
I find it hilarious that “thorough” is what got typo’d there.
A little ironic.
Its a bit embarrassing but I’m moderately dyslexic, using autocorrect especially for words like the “tho” words (though, thought, thorough, etc.) So I got it mixed up.
That’ll do it. But given its usage, I always think it’s funny when it (or some other key word) happens, given it kinda details their point.
Generally, the first step is enabling logging and reading the logs to try and find the problem.
I would install it again, identical to the known working version, and see if that is also broken.
