Nvidia Says It Cannot Reproduce The Blood of Dawnwalker’s DirectX 12 Launch Failure on Linux Through Proton

The Blood of Dawnwalker, the dark fantasy RPG from Rebel Wolves, has been named in a Linux compatibility report involving Nvidia graphics drivers, Proton, and the vkd3d-proton translation layer. The reported issue prevents the Unreal Engine 5 game from creating a Vulkan device when running its DirectX 12 version, potentially stopping it from launching on affected systems.

In an Nvidia driver feedback thread on October 14, 2026, a company moderator said the team had not reproduced the game’s reported failure. The moderator wrote,

“I am still not able to repro VKD3D-Proton vkCreateDevice Failure (vr -3) in DirectX 12 / UE5.”

The distinction matters because Nvidia has filed a tracking bug for another issue in the same report, but has not confirmed an equivalent bug for The Blood of Dawnwalker. The report describes a problem experienced by a user, not a confirmed issue affecting every Nvidia GPU or Linux installation.

THE REPORTED DIRECTX 12 PROBLEM AND ITS WORKAROUND

The original report, posted on September 20 on NVIDIA’s open GPU kernel modules GitHub tracker, describes the failure on a GeForce RTX 3070 running Fedora Linux 44 with the 615.71.09 driver. When the game launches through Proton, vkd3d-proton reports VK_ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED while attempting to create a Vulkan device.

The reporter found that setting VKD3D_CONFIG=single_queue allowed the game to start. This setting avoids using asynchronous compute or transfer queues. The thread initially mentioned additional launch options, but a subsequent clarification established that no_subgroups is not a documented vkd3d-proton option and was not the confirmed fix. The workaround therefore should not be presented as an official solution from Nvidia or Rebel Wolves.

The report also noted that restricting the DirectX feature level could affect DLSS availability. Players should be aware that workarounds may involve trade-offs rather than restoring every graphics feature.

NVIDIA HAS FILED ONE BUG, BUT THE GAME ISSUE REMAINS UNCONFIRMED

Nvidia did confirm that it could reproduce the separate Firefox crash involving its EGL library under native Wayland. The company filed bug 6924256 to track that problem, according to its 615 driver feedback discussion.

However, that tracking number covers the Firefox issue, not the reported The Blood of Dawnwalker launch failure. Nvidia’s moderator asked the reporter about how frequently the game crashes, when the failure occurs, and which video and display settings are being used.

For players hoping to run The Blood of Dawnwalker on Linux with Nvidia hardware, the situation remains unresolved in the cited discussion. The report concerns a particular driver and software configuration, so it does not establish that all Nvidia GPUs or Linux users will encounter the same problem. No confirmed fix for this specific failure was announced in the thread.