Hello y’all, I’m at my wits end. I got the GoG version of BG3 (cause DRM free yay!), but for the love of me I cannot get it to work. I’ve done so much googling and so many workarounds, I’ve installed .net, I’ve skipped the launcher, I’ve used the alternate .exe, I’ve tried proton experimental and 8 and hotfix, but nothing has got me even as far as a loading screen. I just get a flash of black then crashed back to desktop. If anyone has any insights or help I would greatly appreciate it, I’m using Heroic right now but honestly I’ll do whatever to get this thing working.
Hate to say it, but I refuse to buy games on other storefronts since I got the deck (I love the drm-free aspects of gog). Until other companies put in the effort to support Linux, I don’t see how they deserve my money.
If GOG really cared about the consumer they would provide better support for Linux. Their anti-DRM talk is very hollow
Have you tried adding it to Steam as a non-steam game and then forcing compatibility for it to proton experimental in Steam?
Yep, with both exes, no dice. Currently waiting for my lutris download as a next step to try
Are you launching steam with
STEAM_RUNTIME=1?Let us know how you get on! I was planning on buying on GOG myself.
I gave up, so many workarounds and reinstalls and everything for nothing. I’ve refunded and purchased through steam. Luckily someone else in this thread gave me a tip even the steam version is DRM-free, so that’s nice
Interesting. What works for me is a install from Heroic, adding exe to Steam, and also a flag –skip-launcher for it. AFAIK .NET is only needed for the launcher.
I don’t have an exact answer for you but I can 100% confirm it works through Heroic.
Switch to desktop, install heroic launcher, install BG3 with default options to internal SSD, launch with Proton Experimental, it will say you need .net so accept the dialogue and download the exe, use Heroic to install the .net exe to the game’s prefix, go to the configuration again and add --skip-launcher (two hyphens at the beginning) to the launch commands.
That’s it, I did that and ran the game from desktop and then used heroic to add it to Steam. Now I launch the game straight through Game Mode. I also added Heroic as a non-steam game so I can launch it occasionally for patches.
Skipping the launcher is important, as is installing the correct .net exe. I’ve read that some folks had the game claim to be installed but then realized it never actually completed successfully because they ran out of disk space during the final step. It’s a very large install. I also read a one-off comment that power tools can break it, if you have that installed through decky loader.
It broke for me because gustav.pak was missing. Might be the sameissuee for you or something similar. Try repairing the game with Heroic. If that doesn’t work (didn’t for me because of space), try downloading it on a different PC and copy the files on top. That fixed it for me.
Also, disclaimer that this just worked for me and I can’t guarantee anything.
Do you have anything else installed that might interfere with the game ? In another thread I saw someone have issues due to stream deck tools. Some launcher mods ?
Nope, nothing, I haven’t really modded my deck at all. I did have dexky just for steamgriddb and protondb badges, but I uninstalled both of those and then dexky itself just to be sure and no changes
Try Bottles. Lutris almost never works for me, Heroic is a bit better. But once I discovered Bottles, I’m basically never using anything else. Bottles can also automatically add an entry to Steam, so your game. So any non-Steam game on my steamdeck is via Bottles.
Haven’t tried with BG3 but I’ve had great luck with Heroic Game Launcher.
You’ll need to use desktop mode to install it and add steam shortcut. You might need to run Winetricks inside HGL to install latest version of MSVC and . net if it doesn’t launch.