What's that spike around 2021?

I think I have been at exactly this one once lol

Just add HideDesktopPreviewBanner=true to the [General] section in the ~/.config/kdeglobals file and restart plasmashell with systemctl restart --user plasma-plasmashell.service or just log out and back in.

So what do you do when a new movie comes out that you want to watch?

Well that's that then. I also have no idea what to try anymore... I guess you'll just have to wait until some random update fixes the issue. Sorry.

Edit: Since you reinstalled everything, I think it could be some cache on your system that went bad. That would explain why both the Flatpak and native versions don't work and why the rest of your system works. But I have no idea where that cache might be...

This just can't be...

After some deep digging, I found one last Idea. Try launching steam with the -vgui flag and let me know if that works.

Okay... Now that you have the non flatpak steam, could you remove flatpak and xdg-desktop-portal*?

Reboot and launch steam again.

This is the last idea I have for now... If this also doesn't help, it is probably a different issue than this and this, and you should report it to valve.

I am pretty sure that it has to do something specificially with the Steam Flatpak

That is also possible. But then why is it working for everyone else? I used the steam flatpak multiple times today with no issues. I guess you could also ask the same question for the system package issue theory.

How about the package manager version? Is that working? That could give some hints on whether it's the system or the Flatpak package.

Arch, yes. This is what all the people who had to remove xdg Desktop portal use. How could they remove it if it's a dependency of flatpak? Maybe they don't have flatpak.

If you have too much time on your hands, you could try another fresh arch installation on another hard-drive. If it works there, we know it has to be a system package. If it doesn't, it's probably the Flatpak.

All this is seriously so weird...

Okay, so the runtimes were fine, good to know. Btw, you can remove runtimes without first removing the apps that depend on them. They just won't work any more until you install it again.

I wonder if there is a clean way to thoroughly remove all and everything coming from Flatpak. At this point I don’t even care if there is any data lost …

Not an official one, but this should do the trick if you really want to delete everything. If you want to, you could back up the user files for your other Flatpaks first.

1.flatpak uninstall --all --delete-data

2.Remove flatpak with your package manager

3.sudo rm -rf /var/lib/flatpak /var/cache/flatpak ~/.local/share/flatpak ~/.cache/flatpak ~/.local/share/flatpak ~/.cache/flatpak /etc/flatpak

4.Reboot

5.Install flatpak again

6.Add flathub

7.Install steam

If that also doesn't work, I'm 95% certain it has to be one of your system packages. Weird that a system package would break any Flatpaks though... What distro are you using anyway?

I'm starting to think that your flatpak runtimes might be corrupted.

You can try reinstalling the one used by steam. Uninstall with

flatpak remove org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/22.08

And then install it again with

flatpak install org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/22.08

To eliminate any other potential issues I'd recommend deleting the steam user folder as well before launching it again. Like I told you earlier.

Edit: It's hilarious, I find many people having the exact same issue but never with the Flatpak version. Some even use the Flatpak version as a workaround. Very weird.

Okay, well then we'll need to investigate further. 

On one page I found a set of rm commands for resetting Steam issues and adapted it to the Flatpak version.

While these commands will delete most of the steam stuff, just in case you didn't know, for any flatpak you can run flatpak uninstall --delete-data to delete all user data for uninstalled apps. Or, if you don't want to uninstall the app first, just deleting ~/.var/app/the app you want to delete the data of will also do the trick. That, just as a small side note.

Resetting it like this seems to work a bit. The Steam interface started up one time and after logging in and restarting it, it now does the same thing as before.

That's something at least. Why don't we try something? Maybe the beta version will fix it? When you have the steam client open, try switching to the beta version of it. You can do that by opening the steam settings, go to interface and select the beta. If that also doesn't work, try launching it with -no-cef-sandbox, as that also fixed it for some people.

Did you also delete the steam user data when reinstalling it? Regardless, I found a Github issue that looks very similar to yours. Apparently this was caused by a beta update? But this was about 4 months ago? Weird.

Anyway, the suggested fix was to first reset steam with flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam --reset And then opt out of any potential beta: com.valvesoftware.Steam -clearbeta

Not sure if this really is the same issue, but it's definitely worth a try.

Edit: Seems like on some systems, removing the package xdg-desktop-portal-gnome also fixed it. Don't know if it also applies to the flatpak, but just try it. Just remember to install the package again if it doesn't fix it. It may be needed for some other things.

Funny, I remember getting the exact same comment on Reddit when it was still there. While this is obviously correct, to me, it just feels wrong to use Discord in a browser. Also, other clients offer functionality that not even Discord in a browser supports. But for those who don't mind or don't need those extra features, it's a great solution, no doubt.