Game locks up loading into matches, leading to "abandons"

[offsetcyan]

I have been put into low priority matchmaking and banned from queuing twice now for "abandoning" games that I've attempted to join multiple times or wasn't given the option to rejoin.
Example match ID: 22904308 (player steamID64 (Dec): 76561199521990360).

Steam on NixOS (Linux 6.6.52 #1-NixOS SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Sep 18 17:24:10 UTC 2024 x86_64 GNU/Linux)
AMD Ryzen 5 3400G
AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT

There are two bugged "abandon" states I've found.
The first:
1. Load into main menu.
2. Queue "Play Deadlock".
3. Wait for game to be found.
4. Match found, loading title card (image with Haze posing and "Loading" text) appears ("loading screen").
5. Loading screen does not transition to the starting area.
6. After waiting, press the escape key to see the pause menu options.
7. Select "leave match".
8. You have successfully abandoned the game, much to your surprise.

The second:
(follow previous steps 1-4)
5. Because nothing happens, close Deadlock from the Steam interface.
6. Relaunch Deadlock and select "rejoin" from the main menu.
7. Either load into the game like normal, or encounter a bugged loading screen and repeat from step 5.
8. If the previous steps took too long (because the game has massive lag on the main menu because of recently introduced preloading) you are given an abandon.

It's really stressful to be in low priority queue for no other reason than the game crashing. Valve, pls fix.

 

[Aeolianari]

I am continually having this same issue. It makes the game literally unplayable, and I can't say I love being punished by the game for a bug.

 

[MissPotato]

Are you using Vulkan? It seems to be having a quite a few issues for Linux users lately, try switching to DX11 if you haven't already.

 

[brent.hanna]

Same issue as of the last few days on Windows as well (Win10, Intel Core i5 @ 3.60GHz / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060) . Oddly was intermittent but now consistently happening at this point, can check any of my last games for examples.

@MissPotato Oddly I just recently switched to Vulkan and a few other graphic tweaks but reset to defaults / Direct11 to test and another no connection scenario. Also tried a fresh install previously.

 

[outer_sunset]

This has started happening to me after first week October updates, the steps are exactly as OP described.
Sometimes it happens few in a row, but other times I can play 5 games in a row without any issue. I was unable to link this to any network issues, my internet seems to be working fine during.

Also I noticed that the matchmaking penalty is only applied if I explicitly "leave match" or "leave spectating".
If I keep trying to reconnect to the game for several minutes, the menu resets to initial state as if I am not in a match, and I can search for new match.

One more thing I noticed is sometimes when I start the game, the menu music is not playing. Most of the times if this happens, it also means I won't be able to load into game. And during those times, the game will hang and show Not Responding in windows when I try to exit it via menu, so I will have to kill it via steam or task manager. Considering it doesn't happen every time, I would bet on something buggy in game initialization sequence, like a race condition.

Anyway I just accidentally pressed "Leave spectating" and got banned for 30 minutes which is ugh, mildly infuriating, to say the least.

Please prioritize fixing this!