Factorio Forums

TL;DR The steam overlay won't appear when SHIFT+TAB or the PS button (when playing with a PS5 controller) is pressed. When virtual keyboard input is necessary, the game becomes unresponsive to input and the only solution is to ALT+F4. Other games appear to work just fine.

Bug report:

I don't usually open the overlay, so I've noticed this only when playing with a PS5 controller (great work on the controller support btw!). Whenever I have to type something (e.g. train station name, display panel), the game essentially breaks.

For example, take the following screen where text input is necessary: Everything works fine until I press "X" on that text box.

The game continues running as normal, but stops accepting input from the controller - presumably because the game is awaiting input from a virtual keyboard. Using the actual (physical) keyboard allows writing on the text box, but clicking on any buttons does not work at all, so I get stuck on that screen. The game does not appear to register any mouse clicks, keyboard arrow keys, controller input, etc...

Moving the cursor with the mouse, analog stick or PS5 touchpad works fine. Weirdly enough, the ESC key also works, which opens the pause menu. But again, the game does not appear to register any mouse clicks, keyboard arrow keys, controller input, etc, so I can't save and exit the game. At this point, my only option is to ALT+F4.

The issue, however, appears to be related to the steam overlay. Usually, starting the game while in big-picture mode and pressing the PS button while in-game should bring up the big-picture overlay. This does not work. Pressing the button plays the sound that usually plays when opening the overlay, but nothing actually appears on screen - the game simply continues to show on-screen as if nothing happened. The game becomes unresponsive to controller input, as it now appears to be controlling an invisible overlay - I can hear the sounds of navigating through the overlay. Pressing the PS button makes the overlay closing sound, and the controller now controls the game as normal.

In the normal "desktop" mode, SHIFT+TAB does absolutely nothing, the game just keeps playing as usual. I've also tried enabling the steam overlay FPS counter, but this is also missing in both desktop and big-picture modes.

When in big-picture mode, if I press the super key, I can see that the steam overlay is running on a separate window:
The virtual keyboard is not present on that overlay.

As I previously stated, pressing the PS button in normal plays sounds and the game becomes unresponsive to input. If I alt-tab to the overlay, I can navigate the menus. Sometimes, pressing the PS button changes focus automatically to this overlay window but does not return focus to the game, and I could not figure out which combination of options results in the focus changing from the game to the window vs focus remaining on the game.
Pressing the PS button again does not return focus to the game.

Here's a list of things I've tried:
- Enabling/disabling X11/Wayling option in-game
- Using steam beta client
- Launching steam with iGPU, dedicated GPU, enabling/disabling hardware acceleration and "GPU blacklist" options in steam, disabled iGPU in BIOS, etc. No combination of these options made a difference.
- Launching game with compatibility option "Steam Linux Runtime 1.0 (Scout)" option

Here's something I noticed that might be a clue:
Logging out from my current Ubuntu session and selecting the option "Ubuntu on Xorg" (i.e. using X11 instead of wayland) allows both the "normal" overlay and the big-picture overlay to open when SHIFT+TAB or the PS button is pressed, but the virtual keyboard still won't appear on-screen. In this mode, when selecting the text input box using a controller, no virtual keyboard opens but the game keeps accepting input as usual, so I don't get stuck but still can't input anything.

I've attached logs for both X11 and wayland (ubuntu) sessions + the output log of simply running "steam" on the terminal (under wayland), launching the game that way, and reproducing the issue with the input. I've also included the outputs from steam's system report and runtime system information.

I'm new to linux, have been playing the Factorio expansion for the past few weeks and noticed the same issue - steam overlay is not showing up when playing factorio. Unfortunately my response here is only to say that I'm having the same issue

Running Arch here, same issue. This was not happening for me a few days ago so I'm not sure if an update broke it, it maybe if it was something Steam related.

After a little digging, I noticed that this issue only persisted when I had the preferred video driver set to Wayland instead of X11. I also noticed more frequent crashes with this setting on.

Ubspy wrote: Mon Nov 18, 2024 4:27 am After a little digging, I noticed that this issue only persisted when I had the preferred video driver set to Wayland instead of X11. I also noticed more frequent crashes with this setting on.

For me, the issue persists independently of X11 or Wayland being selected on Factorio's settings. I have also never had a single crash, so my guess is that those crashes are unrelated.

For others having this issue, I noticed something else when the game is started in big picture mode. If you get your game stuck like I did, pressing the PS Button + Square (i.e. Steam button + X) brings up Steam's virtual keyboard overlay (which DOES show up, even though the overlay itself does not). Then, closing the virtual keyboard makes the game responsive to input again. Unfortunately, the game completely ignores input from the virtual keyboard, so this workaround is only useful to get your game unstuck so that you can save, exit, disable the overlay, and start the game from the normal desktop mode instead of big picture mode.

It works perfectly for me on Fedora 41, so this might be down to Ubuntu packaging old versions of things. Unfortunately, when it comes to gaming on Wayland, you pretty much need to be on the bleeding edge for things to work properly.