Crash on NVIDIA & Performance Regression

[wide linden]

Issue: Game crashes when using Dedicated GPU (NVIDIA) and experiences massive lag on Integrated GPU (Intel).

Summary:
Previously, the game ran perfectly fine on my RTX 3050 on "High" settings. Now, the game crashes instantly on startup if I try to use the NVIDIA GPU. If I let it run on the integrated Intel GPU, the performance is terrible (30 FPS) and causes severe CPU frequency drops.

System Specs:

OS: CachyOS (Kernel: 6.6.3-4-cachyos)

DE: KDE Plasma 6.0.4 (Wayland)

CPU: Intel i5-11320H (4 cores / 8 threads)

RAM: 32 GB

GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop

GPU 2: Intel Iris Xe

Detailed Breakdown:

The Crash: Using __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 or forcing the NVIDIA ICD causes an immediate crash. It seems like a regression in how the game/Unity handles Vulkan initialization on NVIDIA hybrid setups.

CPU Throttling: When forced to run on the Intel GPU, the game puts an abnormal load on the system. My CPU cores are erratic, with some dropping as low as 1823 MHz while others boost to 4100 MHz. This causes massive input lag and "floaty" mouse movement.

Shader/Optimization: Even on "High" settings (which worked before), the game now feels unoptimized and "heavy". It feels like the shader cache is either corrupted or the game is failing to utilize the dedicated hardware it once supported.

Steps taken:

Tried multiple Proton versions (Experimental, GE-Proton).

Verified game files.

Switched between Wayland and X11 (issue persists).

Please investigate why the NVIDIA support broke and why the CPU usage is so erratic on Intel hardware. It used to be "easy" to run on High, now it's unplayable. Btw chat gpt write that post becouse i am bad at english

[smoky gate]

we will investigate, thank you! @charred smelt @smoky gate

[charred smelt]

Because this is our first report I'm assuming that this is rare issue and your computer specific (sometimes some pcs just stop behaving). Have you tried updating Nvidia drivers? This most likely will fix the issue

running on integrated gpu will be slow and it's expected. Running on 3050 should run just fine but probably only after updating the drivers

Also from what I see it's not windows, with linux I'm not sure what other random updates can appear than can break the game this bad 🤔

[nocturne jewel]

I had performance issues as well but my drivers needed updated, and that fixed my issue

[wide linden]

The issue:
The game's Unity engine fails to initialize the dedicated GPU on hybrid laptops.

Where the problem lies:

Initialization Failure: The game crashes with the InitializeEngineGraphics failed error as soon as it's forced to use the NVIDIA RTX 3050 via standard Linux commands (prime-run / env vars).

Broken GPU Fallback: Because the engine can't "handshake" with the NVIDIA driver properly, it defaults to the Integrated Intel GPU, causing massive lag, or simply fails to boot if the Intel card is disabled.

Conclusion:
It is a Unity Engine initialization bug regarding Vulkan/DX11 support for hybrid graphics on Linux. Please check the "Graphics API" and "Build Settings" for the full release to allow proper NVIDIA GPU switching. I used chat gpt to write this