Certain Steam games freeze when OBS is running/opened

Ask Fedora
1

So I’ve got a weird issue happening with OBS and running games via Steam Proton layer. A few games specifically will freeze up completely if I have OBS running or open it after launching the game. Specifically the game I’m having issues with is called Motor Town: Behind the Wheel. Game runs perfectly without having OBS on at the same time but freezes right after opening it up, regardless is there a game capture/monitor capture/window capture on.

So far what I’ve tried is adjusting game settings such as windowed mode/Full screen/Borderless, switching between DX12 and DX11. I am completely stumped what is causing this as the game doesn’t give error logs either.

Anyone have any suggestions on troubleshooting this further? I’ve spent hours on the internet trying to find anyone posting about similar issues and have not found anything.

Running latest Open NVidia drivers, Proton version change doesn’t affect it all. Tried with 9, 10, GE10, experimental to no avail. ::EDIT:: After some tinkering, it works with Proton 8, no freeze up then but FPS is sadly unplayable on that version of Proton.

2

Did you check both system and user journals for errors?

3

I have not yet (not going to lie, not sure how but I’m sure I’ll find out by searching about it)

I’ve done more testing and trying to fix it and it seems that the freeze occurs when my FPS goes either above or below 60 FPS. The game freezes completely. Windowed, fullscreen or borderless window doesn’t affect the behaviour. It’s consistently works locked at 60 FPS until something causes the FPS to fluctuate and it freezes up. If I raise the FPS cap from 60 to say 90, the game instantly freezes.

4

If your display is max 60Hz then I am not sure why you would run higher refresh as that means visual tearing. Personally I always runs games at displays refresh rate with V-sync enabled.

Is that the case for your display?

5

My monitor is 144hz.

I figured out what was causing it actually by a fluke. It was the AA setting in the game. The game offers FXAA TAA and TSR AA methods, activating TSR and going above 60 FPS causes a XID 13 error on the GPU consistently. Switching to any of the other AA methods solves this for me.