Steam cannot start or uninstall games using Proton 5.13

Hi,
My Steam client started acting up with Proton 5.13, I do not know when it started. When I try to start games using Proton 5.13, tested BTD6 and Space Hulk: Deathwing, it just says “Preparing to launch [game name]…” forever. This is my console output for BTD6. If I try to uninstall them, it just tries forever, and I cannot even cancel it, so I have to kill the Steam processes.

I looked into the issue, and found out that my Proton 5.13 folder in steamapps/common did not have the pycache and dist folder. These were reacquired with a file verify from steam, but the issues still persist. I have even tried deleting Steam, and all its files in my home folder but to no avail. The issues only affect games using Proton 5.13, and if I try switching Proton version, it does not work, so the games are stuck using Proton 5.13.

I am using KDE, a Ryzen 5 2600X and Vega 64. I used Steam Native Runtime when the issues started, but have switched back to using the normal version of Steam.
Thanks for any kind of help in advance.

Verify also Steam Linux Runtime - Soldiers in your library, then verify the game files, and then cleanup the wine/proton prefix for that game (delete or rename the folder for backup) located at ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/{APPID} where {APPID} is the steam Application ID. Beware that deleting this folder will reset all current game config or save files, which may or may not be reaquired automatically depending on the game and if it supports Steam Cloud save.
This should at least create a proper base to start with.

Give also your system information every time you open a thread, if not relevant to you on the moment it never hurts to give it, and is often needed anyway to help you troubleshoot your issues.

If you can start Steam from terminal, the Steam log output can be visible to you in real time, so you can also spot issues from here.

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Thanks! It now works, though I had to switch Proton versions in order to create the wineprefix correctly.
Thanks again for the quick response : - )

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