GE-Proton 11-12 Fixes RuneScape Colors, Wayland Issues and More

GE-Proton 11-12 is a broad compatibility update, with changes spanning graphics translation, controller support, Wayland desktops, video playback and individual game fixes. RuneScape gets a visible rendering correction, while several other updates tackle crashes, stalled cutscenes, input problems and memory growth during long sessions.

The release updates Wine, DXVK, D7VK and VKD3D-Proton, among other components. It also adds Protonfixes for games including The Witcher 3, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, Star Citizen, Gray Zone Warfare, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, StarCraft II, Titanfall 2 and RuneScape. The full GE-Proton 11-12 changelog details the changes.

Graphics and game-specific fixes

For RuneScape players, the color correction should be immediately apparent: the game no longer looks washed out under the affected setup. GE-Proton now reports the same initial surface format as Windows for its swapchains, addressing the mismatch behind the appearance issue. A separate fix lets the RuneScape Vulkan beta display its window on Wine-Wayland with NVIDIA graphics and antialiasing enabled.

Several fixes target rendering and graphics features in other games. Star Citizen gets DLSS support on NVIDIA without requiring bottom-up memory allocation to be disabled. GE-Proton preserves the address range reserved by the NVIDIA driver for DLSS. In Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, AMD-only systems can use the game’s native AGS library without amdxc64, bringing back the FSR 4 option on RDNA3 hardware. That behavior is skipped when PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE is set or amdxc64 is overridden.

Arc Raiders receives a workaround for an NVIDIA crash that could occur if the game window lost focus while a level loaded. The VKD3D-Proton update also includes a wave32 workaround for the game. For StarCraft II, the GPU hang workaround is now limited to Navi 10, the RX 5000 series, so other GPUs retain constant buffer streaming.

There’s also a fix for Titanfall 2 and the EA app on NVIDIA systems using Wine-Wayland. The EA app could crash during startup because of a driver issue when Vulkan instances were destroyed; GE-Proton now works around that behavior. In The Witcher 3, the Wine version is hidden for additional store editions as well.

The component changes cover more than individual games. DXVK 3.1.1-174 revises command submission throttling and memory eviction, adjusts presentation timing with an NVIDIA fence workaround, and fixes D3D9 YUV conversion and D3D11 ForcedSampleCount. VKD3D-Proton 3.1 adds memory allocation fallback across memory types, alongside fence and presentation timing fixes. Its AMD ray tracing glitch fix applies to Unreal Engine 4 games.

D7VK also receives a substantial rework for DirectDraw, Direct3D 7 and older graphics paths. It shares viewport, material and texture objects across interface versions, corrects gamma, display mode and presentation handling, and adds options for legacy aspect ratios and overlays. Wine’s XInput handling now rescans controllers only when a device may have changed, replacing special rescan workarounds previously used for Far Cry 4 and The Witcher 3.

Controllers and desktop behavior

DualSense haptics and adaptive triggers can now work together over USB in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Horizon Forbidden West and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. The games now default to PROTON_SONY_WINDOWS_DEVICE_NAMES=1 (issue 860). For Armored Core VI, a Steam Input fallback restores controller input when Steam Input is disabled for the game.

A new PROTON_STEAM_INPUT_XBOX_PROMPTS setting reports the Steam Deck and Steam Controller as Xbox controllers, so supported games can display controller prompts instead of keyboard prompts. It’s enabled by default for Rune Factory 5 (issue 841). Where Winds Meet now defaults to PROTON_SONY_AUTO_XINPUT=0, fixing a DualSense touchpad issue that required unplugging and reconnecting the controller (issue 829). The Forest also gets a fix for a crash when joining a dedicated server through its in-game browser.

Wayland and window-manager changes address problems that can make a game feel broken even when it launches. On Hyprland, fullscreen games no longer fall back to tiled or maximized windows, a regression affecting titles such as UT2004 and UT4 since GE-Proton 11-7 (issue 871). Fcitx5 input no longer freezes games when PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 is enabled (issue 798), and GNOME tray icons for Wine-Wayland apps appear again after a regression in 11-11 (issue 872).

The Steam Overlay also gets attention. On niri and other Smithay-based compositors, its cursor should no longer drift or lag behind input (pull request 904). Another correction prevents the cursor from freezing in pointer-locked games on compositors that skip wl_pointer.frame. Wine-Wayland game cursors now animate, and X11 games no longer hang while waiting for a pointer grab during focus changes (pull request 920).

Other desktop fixes cover a deadlock and exit hang in Galaxy Idle Clicker (issue 908), missing Cinnamon window borders, and failures to create DXVK or VKD3D-Proton devices on Wayland when an OpenXR runtime is installed. The latter affected DayZ (issue 852). Layered overlay windows can keep fast readback when larger than the display, and an opt-in WINE_LAYERED_OVERLAY_DIRECT=1 setting presents them directly to avoid duplicated or skipped frames.

Video playback and HDR

GE-Proton 11-12 restores video playback across a varied set of games. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 intro videos can run at normal speed again in 4K, using the faster GPU conversion path (issue 389). In Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest, AAC audio no longer cuts off the intro before the main menu (issue 882), while The Godfather’s FMVs no longer flicker at the edges (pull request 909).

The update also repairs movie playback in several arcade releases: Silent Hill: The Arcade no longer shows black movies; Cooper’s 9 plays MP42 videos; Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Duel Terminal 6 keeps mode previews from turning gray; and Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5 plays WMV movies. Need for Speed Underground and Madden NFL Football Season 2, both Global VR versions, avoid crashes during movie playback. PGA TOUR Golf Championship Edition III no longer shows gray blocks after fades. In VRChat’s TopazPlayer, RTSP streams are identified as live so AVPro Video won’t reload them as stalled (issue 896).

HDR handling changes should help users on KDE Plasma 6.8: MangoHud and the Steam Overlay no longer appear oversaturated in HDR10 games under Wine-Wayland. Setting WINE_WAYLAND_HDR_PASSTHROUGH=1 restores the previous behavior (issue 898, issue 916). KDE HDR detection now uses the same standard check as other compositors rather than KWin’s private protocol. A new PROTON_FORCE_HDR=1 option can report HDR when KDE’s SDR brightness matches the display’s peak, or when a compositor enables HDR only for fullscreen HDR clients.

Long-session stability and setup

Some of the most practical changes focus on stability over time. In Helldivers 2, fixes address a memory leak that consumed about 34 GiB of address space and 360 MiB of RAM per hour, as well as threads and file descriptors accumulating during play. Both problems came from killed threads not being cleaned up (pull request 917, pull request 921).

A separate heap growth fix reduced memory growth in EVE Online with five clients from 292 MiB per hour to 28.5 MiB per hour (pull request 907). Space Marine 2 should no longer crash after long sessions, and Persona 5 Royal gets a fix for crashes with Reloaded-II mods (issue 873). The Last of Us Part II daily-run leaderboards work again (issue 463).

Setup and compatibility changes round out the release. A new PROTON_STREAMLINE_UPGRADE option downloads a current NVIDIA Streamline version for games whose bundled version prevents DLSS frame generation overrides. Upscaler fixes allow user-specified DLLs, pass through PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE and PROTON_MLFG_UPGRADE, and skip setup when a fix’s conditions aren’t met.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning now installs d3dcompiler_43 and d3dcompiler_47; Ultima Online gets a ClassicUO Launcher fix; and a Gray Zone Warfare EAC hash fix has been removed. GE-Proton also corrects prefix upgrades and downgrades, improves .NET installation for prefixes moved from Valve’s Proton, and adds support for 32-bit OpenXR applications. The release’s scope is a reminder that compatibility depends on many layers at once: this update’s biggest gains will be seen in the specific games and desktop setups covered by its fixes.

For Steam Deck setup and update instructions, see the Proton GE guide.