Upcoming Steam update should fix lag spikes on Linux when the Steam Overlay is disabled

For quite some time now Linux gamers have been reporting issues with lag spikes in various games on Steam when the Steam Overlay is disabled. It seems Valve may have finally found the cause and a fix is hopefully on the way.

There's been a bug report open on the Steam GitHub page since November 2024, with hundreds of comments discussing the issue. One workaround has been to set this as a launch option for games:

LD_PRELOAD="" %command%

However, that's only good if you know that workaround exists. Ideally, games should perform the same if you have the Steam Overlay enabled or disabled.

Writing on the GitHub, Valve contractor Timothee "TTimo" Besset wrote on May 19th:

Hey all - thanks for the reports. We believe we have a fix for this issue, it hasn't made it's way through our release pipeline yet but I'll update here when we do.

Hopefully then we'll see this problem solved soon.