Edit, SOLVED! For anyone else who may have this, it was the kernel. Updating to kernel 6.8xxx fixed it perfectly !

I finally convinced my SO to use Linux. And they are really liking it so far! I did warn them at first that every game may not work. But almost all of them should. One of the games they are in the middle of, is last of us 2. this game runs perfectly on my 2 other pcs, which are actually older! The older pcs have fx procs and SO’s has a Ryzen 5 of some sort. their computer is all AMD as are all the other computers. But the game repeatedly crashes and won’t launch, even when trying multiple proton versions. Deleting the prefix, folders and retrying everything again, and again, I have searched the output logs online. And I’ve tried everything I’ve seen, and it still will not work. It shows the splash screen sometimes, launches and then crashes instantly. I do notice that in the output logs from the other two computers, It has a quick blurb about wine in there, but on their computer, it says nothing about wine. It always says prefix is invalid. No, matter which proton prefix I try, I’ve tried GE proton as well as all of the built-in steam ones.

Its a bummer because this is making them want to go back to crummy windows because the game worked fine there of course ! Im just baffled. It must be something dumb.

I tried no steam overlay and the launch options of steamdeck and %command%, no luck. Reinstalling steam now to see. I did see i had protontricks as a flatpak so maybe that was it.

I have protonup-qt, protontricks, and bottles installed on it, just like on my other pcs too. Same graphics cards (rx580, yes its junk but cheap)

Update, the game runs good in windowed mode now, but insta crashes the whole window server if I full-screen (logs me out and quits programs). Not sure what to do yet. I did notice this pc is on a 5.xx kernel and im on a 6.xx kernel. Going to update that after we backup.