Dota 2 crashes, then gets stuck on "Downloading Content 0%" when attempting to relaunch

[FakeSalamander]

Your system information

• System information from steam (Steam -> Help -> System Information) in a gist: My system information

• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
• Are you using the latest stable video driver available for your system? Yes
• Have you verified the game files?: Yes. verification hangs at 0% while the bug is ocurring, and finishes with no errors once it ends.

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Sometimes the game will randomly crash: either as I'm loading into a match, halfway through character select, or in the first few minutes of a match. I think it always happen sometime after queuing up, but I'm not sure.

Once the game is closed, it will not reopen again. Attempting to click Play on steam just changes the text to "Downloading Content 0%", which it stays stuck on forever. Eventually, in about 10-15 minutes, the issue mysteriously ends and I can reopen the game, but by then I've already gotten an unavoidable abandon.

I have tried restarting steam, verifying integrity of game files, changing my download region, clearing the download cache, restarting my computer, and none of these have had any effect in ending the bug.

Uninstalling the game while the bug is going on is possible, but it then becomes impossible to download, stuck on an unresponsive "Download" button. Other games can be downloaded and installed just fine while this is going on. Once the 10-15 minutes are up, the game starts downloading as normal in this case.

(Sidenote:: this bug is also occurring to another friend of mine, exactly as described above. His PC hardware is very different, with a NVIDIA GPU and a 12th-gen Intel CPU, but he also runs Arch Linux)

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Play Dota 2 until the game crashes.
2. Attempt to relaunch the game; notice that the game-launching sequence gets stuck on "Downloading content 0%"
3. Wait 10-15 minutes for the bug to end.

[massatt212]

i downgraded to kernel 6.6.58 longterm "lts" and dota works again, hopefully it fixes it for you also

[FakeSalamander]

were you having the same bug, or a different one?

[massatt212]

were you having the same bug, or a different one?

Yes same problem, I just double check with latest linux-zen and game crashed and started to verify.

Testing 6.10.3 I'll get back to you.

[FakeSalamander]

Thank you. CachyOS is a bit odd about kernels, but it has a 6.6.57-3 lts kernel I can try. Will let you know how it goes.

I also found another thread involving the same bug, which I unfortunately missed earlier. I'd like to link to it here, but I don't know how.

[massatt212]

Thank you. CachyOS is a bit odd about kernels, but it has a 6.6.57-3 lts kernel I can try. Will let you know how it goes.

I also found another thread involving the same bug, which I unfortunately missed earlier. I'd like to link to it here, but I don't know how.

I'm using cachyos also 😂

[massatt212]

6.10.3 works also if u don't want to go so low in kernel version.

[light-on-shadow]

Same here, Silverblue 6.11.6-300.fc41.x86_64, horrendous experience.

[FakeSalamander]

Switching to the cachyOS lts kernel seems to have fixed it for now, I haven't had any crash since.
Hoping this will get fixed for the newer kernel soon, but ATM it's just a relief to be able to play Dota again.

I don't know much about Fedora Silverblue, but you should try using Silverblue's LTS kernel and see if it helps too.

[light-on-shadow]

There are no distro specific kernels, it's one linux kernel with a nice packaging around it called a distro.
Which kernel are you running? (uname -r)

// nevermind saw that didn't see you were the OP, 6.11.x onwards seems to be quite buggy with AMD hardware, I've had a host of issues.

[light-on-shadow]

Well, hard to believe but seems like RAM was the issue in my case.
All of a sudden, yesterday, PC wouldn't even POST.
Tried one stick then another and it came back to life, dota stopped crashing too.

There have been other updates but I had the same issue with Deadlock and it's gone too.
A bit weird only Valve games were the canary in the coalmine.

I'm running with one stick for now, I'll know for sure when the new RAM kit arrives.

[Kuechlin]

i had the same issue with kernel 6.11.7-200 for me the fix was to use steam client beta