Tech

Steam Deck hit by bootloop havoc with Decky plug-ins

Rosalie Newcombe
Image of the Decky Loader logo on the screen of a Steam Deck, with a cracked screen image by Ivan Vranić form Unsplash.comValve/Decky/Unsplash

The latest version of the Steam Deck add-on DeckyLoader is causing havoc on plug-ins, causing one to be entirely delisted.

It’s not been the best time for the Steam Deck. When the Jackbox Megapicker game launcher landed on the handheld, some systems bricked entirely. Even after some quick fixes, some Steam Decks outright refused to boot back up.

Spotted by GamingOnLinux, while the game launcher trouble has now seemingly been remedied, the problems don’t finish there. The latest version of Decky Loader is causing issues of its own — resulting in a boot loop error, and a plug-in being delisted.

Steam Deck OLED in a caseDexerto

Music Control – among others – a Decky plugin is one of the culprits of the boot loop errors in Steam Deck’s gaming mode.

Some Steam Deck users have reported that issues have happened since the pre-release of the new version of Decky.

According to Decky Loader developer Train, as a result of these errors, the music plug-in has since been delisted from Decky entirely and “should be uninstalled.”

As reported by GamingOnLinux, Train took to the official Decky Loader Discord channel to share the news. They shared that while Music Control seems to be the source, other users have experienced the same issue without the plug-in installed.

As a result, Train recommends “manually deleting one plugin at a time to see what plugin is affecting you” if you’re currently running the latest pre-release branch of the add-on.

Image of a Steam Deck OLED sitting on top of The Legend of Zelda: Teaars of the Kingdom edition Switch OLED.Dexerto

Any plugins would need to be deleted from ~/homebrew/plugins/, and a sudo password will be required to properly delete the files, according to the Decky developer.

Here at Dexerto, we attempted to witness the Decky Loader boot loop issue for ourselves. However, we were unable to put it to the test due to the affected plugin being delisted.

Every affected Decky Loader plugin known so far

If you’re still using the table branch of Decky, you should be fine. These ongoing boot loop errors are only affecting plugins alongside the latest pre-release.

However, one Deckty Loader Discord user has been gathering a list of affected plugins, to make knowing what ones to avoid, or delete, an easier process.

As of the writing, the following list of plugins are affected:

  • DeckRoulette 1.1.3-0950f29
  • GameView Music 1.1.0-1
  • MicroSDeck 0.9.1-1 (see list below)
  • MusicControl 1.1.5 (see list below)
  • Network Info 1.0.1-13b914b
  • Remote Play Whatever 1.0.0
  • System Toolbox 1.0.2-1

If you want to keep up to date with Decky Loader, and any more affected plug-ins, you can join the Decky Loader Discord channel.

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