Thanks slouken for the ongoing maintenance and engagement with the community.

My device is now on build 883, and the issue is getting worse that both of my games (Baulder’s Gate 3 and Cities Skyline 2) are now running into blank screen but fine audio problem.

I’ll send debug log soon :)

Edit: debug log here https://file.io/UdmPYCjzjbeC

For this log I turned off hardware encoding on the host and I acutally didn't get any blank screen. rather the game paused a couple of times with the red network connection symbol came up. Nothing out of ordinary with this log.

And for clarification - when the blank screen happens, I can't actually exit streaming on the steam link no matter what button I press on my xbox 360 controller, so not sure how to actually save the debug log for you.

If of any help, my host GFX is Radeon 6700 and CPU is i5-12400.

Hello! I'm experiencing the exact same issue since updating yesterday to build 883, (black screen rendering while audio and gameplay continue in the background).

Also I must say the streaming connection is generally much less stable than the previous build. Audio glitches and periodic lag every minute or so. The build I had been using for the last two weeks didn't exhibit any of these issues until updating to build 883.

I've have opened a service ticket - HT-3MVK-T2TK-872W

Hope this helps!

I'm also getting black screen all the time. I submit a service ticket and uploaded log files.

I've also started having the issue where the screen goes black after a few minutes. Can someone point me in a direction to figure out how to find my log files and upload them? Thanks!

I'm using the actual physical steam link, with both my PC and my steam link being tied in via Ethernet to my router. No issues in the past. Just started today.

Hi all,

TL;DR I have isolated my blank screen problem to having iGPU hardware encoding turned on. It is an issue on build 883 but not specific to. Disabling it avoids blank screen on my physical Steam Link.

This morning (UTC+1100) I factory reset my physical Steam Link (to build 495) and then loaded previous public build 861 on it. I then streamed City Skylines 2 with 1) Hardware Encoding On, then 2) HW Enc Off 3) just iGPU on 4) just AMD on. I got blank screens with 1 & 3 but not on others. During blank screen time Steam Link still had audio, and i could not get back to main menu at all. However, when I disabled Streaming on the Host PC, Steam Link returns to main menu as if nothing has happened. From this I was able to go to System -> Save Debug log.

I then updated Steam Link to latest public build 883 and repeat above. I get exact same results as above. Further, the network connectivity is less stable regardless if i use cat 5e cable between Host PC and Steam Link.

So at this stage i think Steam Link is not happy if host PC uses iGPU encoding, and blank screen manifests when network connectivity is unstable.

I’ll edit this post with a link to debug log soon. After factory reset each log size has gone up from 1MB to 5MB so I’ll need to zip it

Originally posted by Marvin Mart:

Hi all,

TL;DR I have isolated my blank screen problem to having iGPU hardware encoding turned on. It is an issue on build 883 but not specific to. Disabling it avoids blank screen on my physical Steam Link.

This morning (UTC+1100) I factory reset my physical Steam Link (to build 495) and then loaded previous public build 861 on it. I then streamed City Skylines 2 with 1) Hardware Encoding On, then 2) HW Enc Off 3) just iGPU on 4) just AMD on. I got blank screens with 1 & 3 but not on others. During blank screen time Steam Link still had audio, and i could not get back to main menu at all. However, when I disabled Streaming on the Host PC, Steam Link returns to main menu as if nothing has happened. From this I was able to go to System -> Save Debug log.

I then updated Steam Link to latest public build 883 and repeat above. I get exact same results as above. Further, the network connectivity is less stable regardless if i use cat 5e cable between Host PC and Steam Link.

So at this stage i think Steam Link is not happy if host PC uses iGPU encoding, and blank screen manifests when network connectivity is unstable.

I’ll edit this post with a link to debug log soon. After factory reset each log size has gone up from 1MB to 5MB so I’ll need to zip it

It may make sense.

Although using integrated GPU (iGPU) is an approach contrary to the approach of Steam Link or Remote Play in general.

Isn't the idea to use a thin client and host with good computing power? What's the point of using iGPU?

if you have a dedicated gpu, using the igpu to encode, is basically done with no extra load on the host system

I have a dedicated GPU. I am playing games that never had any issue with the black screen prior to the Firmware update. iGPU hardware encoding may also cause the issue, but it is not the only issue with the Firmware update.

From what I can see, it seems like the Link is just much more fragile after the Firmware update. It looks like anytime I get a blip in the network, the Link crashes and doesn't recover. Prior to the update, if my network browned out, the connection would recover after a second. Now if the video stream is ever interrupted it results in a critical failure. Not sure if some error check was removed or what happened in the update. But I would really like to be able to roll back. I had 0 issues with the old Firmware, and now my Link is completely broken after the Firmware update

Prior to the Firmware update, if my network was having issues I would see a red circle icon flash in the corner, sometimes turning yellow before stabilizing. Now I don't ever see that. Because if the red icon appears it immediately freezes the display and never recovers.

Agreed, and furthermore it seems that it's far more frequently unstable than it was before too.

Originally posted by Marvin Mart:

Hi all,

...

I’ll edit this post with a link to debug log soon. After factory reset each log size has gone up from 1MB to 5MB so I’ll need to zip it

This is the crash logs[file.io] for when I rolled back to 861. Sorry I just realise I forgot to save the debug log when trying on the 883!

Also maybe relevant - previously I have been following the steam link app 1.3.8 thread after ive applied the beta build 882 and blank screen happened. I rolled back public build and didn't have any issue until 882 became public and automatically applied to my steam link. It took me to realise why I started getting blank screens on public build!

Lastly I have not raised a support ticket because I actually do not know if the bug is on the host's win 11 steam client (encoding issue) or on the physical steam link (decoding / buffering issue). I haven't try remote playing games on another win 11 pc with steam client.

Now my Steam Controller can no longer connect to the Link either... Just what kind of crazy stuff happened in this firmware update. It seems like every single feature I use on the Link no longer works

Please roll us back to a working version of the firmware.

Using the hardware Steam Link I'm now unable to log into Windows remotely as I can't enter the Windows login PIN on the hardware Link. Previously I could login using the Steam Link app on my phone to enter the PIN, unlocking Windows. I'd then disconnect from the Steam Link app and connect via my hardware Link. Since the recent updates, once I stop streaming to the phone app the screensaver immediately restarts which locks the desktop again. Has this behaviour been changed?

I've noticed when I first start the Link now it has an annoying overlay saying you can change the default boot behavior. That overlay blocks all interaction with the PC until you launch the main Steam window from the streaming device. Which of course means I have to run to my laptop every time I want to stream to my TV. Its super annoying,
kind of defeats the whole purpose of the Link if you have to start stuff up manually from the main device before you can use remote.

That is also probably what is preventing your remote login. Lots of stuff got badly messed up with the latest firmware push...

I have not seen the black screens as others have reported but I do seem to have issue connecting a second steam controller to the dongle - was there some change in this regard?