Here’s my GE-Proton11-12 Steam Deck news roundup, because the new build is out and it changes a lot. GloriousEggroll published the GE-Proton11-12 release on 3 November 2026, with a long list of changes since GE-Proton11-11. There’s a lot in there for desktop Linux, but a good chunk matters for Steam Deck and Steam Machine players too, especially if you play Helldivers 2 or Space Marine 2.
I’ve gone through the release notes and pulled out the parts I think matter most. I haven’t tested this build myself, so everything below is based on what the notes say.
What is GE-Proton?
GE-Proton is a community-made build of Proton, the compatibility layer Steam uses to run Windows games on Linux and SteamOS. It’s maintained by GloriousEggroll and adds its own fixes and tweaks on top of Valve’s work. It doesn’t replace Valve’s Proton. Instead, you install it alongside and pick it for the games that need it.
Helldivers 2 and Space Marine 2 stability fixes
For me, these are the biggest wins in this release:
- Helldivers 2: a memory leak of about 34 GiB of address space and 360 MiB of RAM per hour has been fixed, along with threads and file descriptors piling up during a session. Both came from killed threads not being cleaned up properly.
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2: crashes after long play sessions are fixed, using Proton-JE’s
RtlWaitOnAddress()fix. - Wider memory fix: unbounded heap growth has also been fixed. In EVE Online running five clients, memory growth dropped from 292 MiB an hour to 28.5 MiB an hour.
A leak that grows by hundreds of megabytes an hour is exactly the kind of thing that hurts on a device with shared memory like the Steam Deck, so I’m keen to see how long sessions hold up. If you’ve had trouble with Helldivers 2 before, my older post on fixing Helldivers 2 crashes on Steam Deck is still worth a look.
GE-Proton11-12 Steam Deck news: the controller prompt fix
This one is directly about our hardware. GE-Proton11-12 adds a new option, PROTON_STEAM_INPUT_XBOX_PROMPTS. It reports the Steam Deck and Steam Controller to the game as an Xbox controller, so games show controller prompts instead of keyboard prompts. It’s turned on by default for Rune Factory 5.
There are more controller changes too:
- XInput now rescans controllers only when a device could have changed, replacing older rescan hacks for Far Cry 4 and The Witcher 3.
- Armored Core VI controllers now work through the Steam Input fallback with Steam Input turned off. Before, the game got no input at all.
- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Horizon Forbidden West and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered now default to
PROTON_SONY_WINDOWS_DEVICE_NAMES=1, so DualSense haptics and adaptive triggers work together over USB. - Where Winds Meet now defaults to
PROTON_SONY_AUTO_XINPUT=0, fixing the DualSense touchpad not working until you replugged it. - The Forest no longer crashes when joining a dedicated server from the in-game browser.
OpenXR updates for VR and the Steam Frame
VR gets some attention as well. Wine’s OpenXR layer (wineopenxr) has been updated to OpenXR 1.1.65, with initial support for D3D-consumed swapchains and fixed extension string lengths. 32-bit OpenXR applications are now supported, and DXVK and VKD3D-Proton no longer fail to create a device on Wayland when an OpenXR runtime is installed, which affected DayZ. The release notes don’t mention the Steam Frame by name, but as a Frame owner I’m always happy to see VR compatibility move forward. There’s also an aarch64 (ARM) build alongside the usual x86_64 one, and FEX, the x86 emulator for ARM, has been updated to FEX-2610-116. If you’re into VR mods, my Titanfall 2 VR guide for Steam Frame is a good place to start.
Other game fixes in GE-Proton11-12
- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: 4K intro videos no longer play in slow motion.
- Warhammer 40,000: Darktide: on AMD-only systems, the FSR 4 option is back on RDNA3 graphics.
- Persona 5 Royal: crashes with Reloaded-II mods are fixed.
- The Last of Us Part II: daily-run leaderboards work again.
- EA app: installs failing with error INST-14-1603 are fixed.
- Arcade and Konami titles: a batch of movie fixes, including Silent Hill: The Arcade, Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5 and several Global VR games.
- NVIDIA-only fixes: Star Citizen DLSS works again and an Arc Raiders crash when the window loses focus during loading is fixed. These won’t affect the Steam Deck’s AMD chip, but they’re good news for desktop players.
Component updates
Under the hood, Wine moves to Valve’s bleeding-edge branch from 31 October 2026, plus newer commits. DXVK is now v3.1.1-174, with a rework of command submission throttling and memory eviction. VKD3D-Proton moves to v3.1, with an Arc Raiders workaround and a fix for a UE4 ray tracing glitch on AMD. DXVK-NVAPI is now v0.9.3, and D7VK gets a large rework for DirectDraw, D3D7 and older games.
Desktop Linux changes
A lot of this release is aimed at desktop Linux. There are Wine-Wayland, Hyprland, GNOME, KDE HDR and Cinnamon fixes, plus two new options: PROTON_FORCE_HDR=1 for compositors where HDR isn’t detected properly, and PROTON_STREAMLINE_UPGRADE, which downloads a current NVIDIA Streamline so the DLSS frame generation override works in games that ship an old one.
How to install GE-Proton11-12 on Steam Deck
- Switch to Desktop Mode and install ProtonUp-Qt from the Discover store if you don’t have it.
- Open ProtonUp-Qt, choose Add version, select GE-Proton and pick GE-Proton11-12.
- Go back to Gaming Mode (or restart Steam) so the new version shows up.
- Open the game’s Properties, go to Compatibility, turn on forcing a specific Steam Play compatibility tool and choose GE-Proton11-12.
The same steps work on the Steam Machine. If a game runs fine on Valve’s Proton, there’s no need to switch, but for Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2 or games that show keyboard prompts on the Deck, this release looks worth a try. For more on Valve’s own builds, here are my thoughts on the Proton 11 beta.
