Minecraft Dungeons 2 recently launched on Steam to a decent-but-not-stellar 32,556 peak concurrent players, but not without its fair share of complaints. Both Windows and Linux users alike seem to be experiencing issues launching the Steam version of the game, with SteamOS and Linux users being entirely unable to launch the game under Valve's Proton translation layer. Fortunately, there is light at the end of the tunnel, as Microsoft has officially confirmed in a Minecraft forum post that it is working on Steam Deck support, which consequentially means SteamOS and general Linux support via Valve's Proton.

In the meantime, several community members have posted community solutions in Minecraft Dungeons 2 Steam reviews. As one user explains it after some experimentation, there appear to be missing dependencies related to the Microsoft Store API that prevent Minecraft Dungeons 2 from launching via Proton. The current community fix is documented on a GitHub repo and involves setting a launch option in Steam and running a script to install dependencies and copy DLL files into the correct location. As the creator describes it, the workaround creates "A local stand-in for Microsoft Gaming Services so Minecraft Dungeons 2 can start under Proton."

A local stand-in for Microsoft Gaming Services so Minecraft Dungeons II (Steam app 1912410) can start under Proton. The game loads xgameruntime.dll; this repository builds it. It does not modify the game or ship Microsoft's library.

Sign-in is a manual step: run xauth.py once with your own Microsoft account, and it caches the Xbox tokens next to the helper. The DLL only reads that cache at launch—there is no in-game sign-in window.

As always, it's important to note that, unless you're well-versed enough at tinkering in Linux, it's never a good idea to paste commands into the terminal, especially when those commands copy files and run scripts on your machine. Doing so without understanding what the commands and scripts are doing is unsafe.