CodeWeavers blog about their Linux / Steam Deck work on Proton with PooShooter

PooShooter: Toilet Invaders, yes it's a real game and we all had a bit of a chuckle when we saw Valve noted it fixed in a Proton changelog recently. CodeWeavers, Valve's partner on Proton development, have a blog post up talking about why it was interesting to solve.

As I've said in the past, fixing up issues even in tiny games can have a big effect elsewhere. It's not always the huge exciting flashy AAA names that need fixing, as problems affecting multiple titles can be hiding anywhere — even in a 2D game about a "Bum fighting against vengeful Toilets". Side-note: writing this might be the highlight of my day, not many jobs get you to talk about a buttocks fighting toilets. I should talk about this the next time someone asks what I actually do…

Magnificent looking isn't it?

CodeWeavers' quality assurance team noted an issue with PooShooter: Toilet Invaders having a black screen with Proton, although it reportedly worked with earlier versions. Things got weirder when they couldn't get it to work with any Proton version, even when they manually removed previous Proton files that might be sticking around. However, it did work when they used the "Delete Proton Files" option directly on Steam Deck in the developer menu.

Eventually they fixed the black screen rendering issue, which should also fix up some other titles but it also highlighted an issue with how the Delete Proton Files feature worked. As it turned out Valve had a bug in the Steam client where it wasn't removing files with filenames that had a colon (:) in them. Thanks to the work involved in fixing this tiny weird indie title, a bug that could have been causing numerous issues elsewhere was found — nice. It's also slightly hilarious that a game about bums and toilets, helped find an issue with a colon. Ah, simple pleasures. The jokes could write themselves at this point.

So the next time you need to clear some Proton files on Steam Deck just think - it's like flushing the toilet. Nice and clean.

You can read the full blog post here.