The Finals update sours Steam Deck users' excitement with game crashes, broken voice chat on SteamOS and Linux

Less than a week ago, news broke that The Finals was suddenly playable on the Steam Deck and desktop Linux via Steam's Proton compatibility layer, but mere days later, the developers issued a new patch that seems to be causing non-Windows users grief.

Earlier today, users on r/SteamDeck started reporting game crashes in The Finals after the Season 1 Update 1.5.0 — an update that introduced a slew of new content, including new game modes — was issued. Aside from introducing new in-game content, the update was also meant to address rampant cheating, poor matchmaking, and security.

According to the report, the game would crash to a black screen at various stages of running the game. Some reported crashes on the main menu, but others were able to get as far as joining a game before it booted them out, too. 

As it turns out, these game crashes were being caused by an issue with the in-game voice chat. As such, the solution to the problem is to disable voice chat, although this is apparently easier said than done. It seems as though, in some cases, The Finals is failing to save the settings or reverting voice chat to the default “on” state when restarting the game.

For now, the solution seems to be to run the game, disable voice chat, and then wait for it to crash. For whatever reason, this order of operations results in voice chat staying disabled the next time the game boots again.

While Steam Deck gamers can fortunately still play The Finals, for now, these update-induced bugs indicate that the developer, Embark Studios, isn't prioritising Linux and Steam Deck validation and testing. This feeds into the continued fears that unofficial Linux support could result in lost progress from a game suddenly dropping Linux support. Even worse than that, though, is the risk of an account ban from playing on Linux.

If you're looking for a handheld gaming experience but don't want to deal with learning how to use Linux, take a look at the Asus ROG Ally (curr. $599.99 at Best Buy) or Lenovo Legion Go (curr. $699.99 on Amazon)