6
votes
Help - Steam Link inconsistent across different games
Hey Steam users, I'm wondering if you can help me troubleshoot an issue I am having with Steam Link. Some games work flawlessly, and some games just show a black screen (with game audio) on the Steam Link Client. I have tried this in various configurations and devices, but my host machine remains the same (PC running Bazzite)
I have tried this wired via router (to Steam Link on raspberrypi OS), wifi (to steam deck), and cellular via remote streaming to the android app.
The symptoms are the same on each setup. Games like Helldivers 2 and NMS run flawlessly, others are just a black screen.
Also, big picture mode runs great until you bring up the menu, and then the screen goes black.
Do you guys have any ideas?
I'll have to dig around for specific help on Steam Link, so I must apologize in advance ... however, I've never gotten Steam Link to behave well at all. If it isn't issues like what you're facing, it's others - poor latency, low image quality, and other issues.
What I did instead was, I installed Sunshine on the host machine, and installed Moonlight on the device which I was going to be using to play the game. While the initial setup may be a bit time-consuming, given that you're running an atypical OS (Bazzite) I'm going to guess that you're more tech-savvy than I am - and that said, I didn't find the setup to be that complicated or challenging to implement.
I even found a video that appears to explain how to set this all up on Bazzite itself. I haven't watched it myself, as I'm at work and haven't the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVKmQTkLvLY
I hope someone comes through and explains the specific issue with Steam Link for you, though.
EDIT TO ADD:
Looks like there's some years-old discussions on the issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam_Link/comments/mbqyor/support_steam_link_just_displays_black_screen/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/506500/discussions/0/343785574529836515/
I am also a convert to Sunshine/Moonlight due to many issues encountered with Steam Link (Linux host, clients on a combo of Linux and Android devices). I've only had one major problem with Sunshine (you need to jump through some hoops if you're running Wayland), but once I got that worked out it's been 100x more reliable and consistent compared to the constant struggles I had with Steam Link prior to the switch.
I also had a lot of performance issues with steam link and ended up switching to moonlight. I'm on windows so I use artemis I think it's called.
It works great, and definitely also recommend it.
Artemis is a... fork? I dunno, maybe the wrong term, but it's related to Moonlight.
I have a friend who tried Sunshine and Moonlight and it didn't work well at all for him, but Sunshine and Artemis did. I'm just happy there's some options in this space.
Off the cuff it's probably a Wayland vs X thing. Use something like mangohud to figure out what graphics api is in use and if it's using Wayland or xwayland/x11 for the display-server and you'll probably find a pattern to what games don't work.
AFAIK, steam streaming doesn't like Wayland, but I've been using sunshine + moonlight for a long time now so I don't know the current state of things.
Edit: quick search of "Steam link Wayland" suggests this is still a problem and sounds very much like you described, down to the big picture bugginess:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1ob0raz/steam_link_to_wayland_host_black_screen_x11_fine/
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/6148
So my guess is non native games (running x11/xwayland) work, while linux+wayland native games or games where you've set the Proton_Enable_Wayland environment variable do not (and wayland desktop sessions of course)
Edit edit: work arounds are either to configure the graphical user session to use X11 or go all in on sunshine + moonlight (one of us! one of us!)
Hmm first I'd be comparing settings for full screen versus borderless windowed, but that doesn't help with the big picture issue. Is your host using AMD or Nvidia? Big picture mode is a mess on my Nvidia card so it wouldn't surprise me if streaming from one doesn't quite work, could try disabling hardware decoding and smooth animations from interface settings in desktop mode.
Most folks would probably recommend using Sunshine/Moonshine over Steam's streaming, though I'm not sure if using the actual Steam Link changes the equation.
replying to this one because it mentions hardware encoding.
if you turn off hardware acceleration or the like, it may fix the black screen. discord shows a black screen when streaming things if hardware acceleration is on in my experience, and i imagine the games or video treat streaming there the same as to a link
obviously this isnt great for something that needs hardware acceleration though :(