Steam stealing keyboard focus

[[Linux] unbridledExüberance]

I've noticed that some games: namely FTL and Bastion will have their keyboard input stop working sometimes. This is not a problem when launching the games without Steam- it only occurs when Steam is running.

I suspect that Steam is stealing keyboard focus away from the games in the same way that SDL games steal input away from the desktop environment, even though there's no reason for Steam to even need keyboard input at all since I don't even have a Steam window open :/

I have never had this happen with Half Life or TF2, however.

Has anyone else experienced this issue on other games?

[640kB]

I also experienced this issue with the game Natural Selection 2 and Killing Floor. I think it must be an issue with the windowmanager.

I have this problem under Gnome 3. If I start the game in the windowmanager fluxbox, I have no problems.

[Toquita]

I had similar problems on Counter Strike: Condition Zero, under Unity. This is probably fixed for everyone by now but I'm not sure if it's related to the DE. If not, then just report the issue on Github and wait for the fix.
It doesn't happen on openSUSE/Arch with KDE.

[640kB]

Yeah, I also reported my experiences at github.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1227

[Toquita]

640kB, do you have a spare drive to test other DE's or maybe you'd be willing to test them on your current system install?

[640kB]

Yeah, I could test other DEs oder WMs. Any suggestions? For your information, i am using Arch Linux

[Toquita]

You could try KDE. It doesn't happen on KDE for me.

sudo pacman -S kde
sudo systemctl enable kdm
sudo reboot

If you don't want to download the almost 800MB of KDE you can try the minimalistic version with

sudo pacman -S kdebase

[Toquita]

Also, feel free to test other DE's, it may be a problem with GNOME.
I would try XFCE, which is roughly 70MB of download (without the xfce4-goodies)

[640kB]

I could imagine, the problem is the window manager "mutter" in gnome 3. Is there a way to replace the window manager? I know, that was possible in gnome 2.

But I will try the minimalistic version of KDE.

[Toquita]

There should be a way, yes, but you're gonna have to research on that. The default WM on KDE is Kwin, but you could have good results with others.

I wouldn't recommend you to try a WM that doesn't belong to your DE, but if you know what're doing you should be fine.

Users may prefer to install a full-fledged Desktop Environment,

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Window_Manager

[[Linux] unbridledExüberance]

I'm using Compiz so it's not specific to Mutter.

[Toquita]

It happens in specific games, right? So it might not be WM related, but related to specific games.

[640kB]

In KDE I have no problems with the keyboard input so far. I will test it for a week. Installing xfce4 now.

Yes, this issue is not present in every game.

[Toquita]

I don't think there will be problems if you 'sudo systemctl enable kdm'

But if problems appear than it's not WM related IMO

[640kB]

Why should I enable kdm? Thats only the login manager.

Edit: No Problems in xfce4 so far. For now I can only reproduce this error in Gnome 3.

[UbuntuAddicted]

it happens to me using XFCE 4.10 in Xubuntu 12.04.3 with the game Deadfall Adventures. It makes the game unplayable pretty much since out of no where my character will be stuck moving forward even when i let go of the w key. sometimes if i hit the sc key it will bring up the menu, i can resume game and continue, other times the keyboard is completely unresponsive. very irritating to say the least.