On November 10, 2015, Bethesda Game Studios released the fourth mainline entry into the long-running Fallout series, titled Fallout 4. Available on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, the game received quite positive reviews from critics and fans alike, with most praising its narrative and player freedom. Besides the platforms it was released on, a lot of players have also been enjoying it on the Steam Deck. Unfortunately, recently there have been a lot of complaints regarding Fallout 4 crashing on the Steam Deck.
At the time of publishing this, Fallout 4 is yet to be Verified for the Steam Deck which is about to change soon. Despite that, the game runs just fine on the Deck. Crashing issues on the Deck are nothing new and can be caused by a lot of factors, ranging from Proton compatibility to missing game files. Regardless of what the cause here is, this crashing issue for Fallout 4 on the Deck needs to be fixed. So, let’s go ahead and find out how you can do that.
Fallout 4 crashes on Steam Deck: How to fix it
Since Fallout 4 isn’t officially supported for the Steam Deck, players will have to make do with the following workarounds. Try these and see if any one of them is of help to you.
Verify and repair the game’s file –
Some players have found out that the game particularly runs fine after verifying and repairing the game’s file. As such, we recommend you do that. You can use the following steps if you don’t know how to verify and repair the game’s file:
- Press the Steam button on your Deck and head to your Steam Library.
- Now, select Fallout 4 and press the three lines button on the Deck.
- From the options present, select Properties > Installed Files > Verify integrity of game files.
- Once the process is complete, launch the game and see if the issue continues. If it does, try another workaround.
Use another Proton layer –
Switching to another Proton layer could also be of help to you. You can start with Proton GE 9.1, as some had success running the game with it. However, you can also use Proton Experimental and other Proton layers if Proton GE 9.1 doesn’t work.
Perform some tweaks –
A user on ProtonDB suggested the following workaround for this crashing issue, so we suggest you give it a try.
- Start by switching the Proton layer to the Proton Experimental.
- Next, set the game’s resolution to 992×620 and detail to Low.
- Once that’s done, change the Deck’s scaling feature to FSR and FSR sharpness to 3.
- Now, launch the game and hopefully, the issue should be resolved.
Run the game without mods –
This one is specifically for those players running the game on their Deck with mods. If you happen to be one of them, we highly recommend that you uninstall or disable all mods and run the game unmodded. If even this doesn’t work out, you can check out other workarounds.
Delete all creation items –
A player recommended deleting all creation items from the game’s file if Fallout 4 crashes during the startup movie. You can do that by heading to this location: /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Fallout 4/data/. Next, find all files starting with ccbgsfo followed by a four-digit number and delete them. Once that’s done, launch the game and see if the issue persists.
Update –
Players need to make sure that they are running the latest version of Fallout 4. Furthermore, you should also check if there’s an update available for SteamOS. If there’s one, download and install it too.
Switch to Desktop Mode –
If the game keeps crashing on Gaming Mode then we suggest you switch to Desktop Mode. Some players have reported the game running fine without issue in Desktop Mode and as such we recommend you do so too.
Reinstall –
Now if none of the previous workarounds are of help then try reinstalling Fallout 4. Sometimes reinstalling can help with issues like this, so give it a try and see if the issue continues following a reinstall of the game.
And that’s all the workarounds we have for this. You can also take a quick look here if you are experiencing Steam Deck controller issues with Fallout 4. Lastly, keep following DigiStatement for more such content. Also read: Fallout New Vegas Steam Deck controller not working: How to fix it?
