Game Doesn't Start / No Audio

[bryku]

Description

I last played Dota 2 2 or 3 days ago, but today I tried to play and it didn't work.

The Logo Screen pops up, but then nothing happens. After about 30 seconds, the mouse cursor will change to Dota's cursor, but that is about it.

I've tried restarting and reloading Dota 2 a dozen times, but nothing seems to work. Out of the dozen attempts there was 1 time that the Main Menu did display, but I didn't have any audio. I clicked to goto the settings to check and it looked good, so I went back to the Main Menu and then it locked up again.

I never once got an error message or popup. I use Manjaro linux and haven't installed, uninstalled, or updated anything. When I first opened steam there was an updating bar, but steam itself works fine.

Example Match ID (and possibly Timestamp)

No response

Screenshots

[bryku]

I was was curious to see if my "No Audio" issue might have been a clue and luckily for me I found someone with a similar problem on linux.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Dota2-Gameplay/issues/12233

None of them mentioned dota not being able to start, but at this point i figured I might as well give it a shot. After going through one of the solutions to fix the audio it ended up fixing all of my dota problems. Here is the solution I used for arch/manjaro:

sudo pacman -S wireplumber pipewire-audio
sudo pacman -R pulseaudio pulseaudio-bluetooth manjaro-pulse pulseaudio-equalizer pulseaudio-zeroconf pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-ctl 
sudo pacman -S pipewire-pulse
systemctl --user --now enable wireplumber.service
reboot

After that you need to add -sdlaudiodriver pipewire to the start up options in dota.

• Open Steam
• Goto Library
• Right Click Dota 2
• Click Properties
• Scroll down to "Launch Options"
• Paste -sdlaudiodriver pipewire

You should be good to go!

[Yuuupie]

I initially had just the audioless problem from the thread you linked, but just today started encountering your problem where it didn't load past this screen. Can confirm uninstalling pulseaudio and installing pipewire did the trick. Thanks for the solution.

Though pipewire is a bit dodgy with it's implementation with KDE Plasma so hope I can eventually go back...

Edit: Should also mention that I didn't need to enable wireplumber or add the -sdlaudiodriver flag.

[TimYi]

I'm an Ubuntu user and I've encountered a similar issue. While I'm able to play the game, I frequently experience audio malfunctions where there's no in-game sound. Hope this additional information helps in troubleshooting.

[datalore92]

Thanks bro! I'm on Arch Linux and I was having the same exact problem and your solution worked for me. I had no idea how to fix it. Thanks, I'm glad I found your post!