Proton: can't reliably disable esync, Proton ignores PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 and WINEESYNC=0

[qptain-Nemo]

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: primarily testing Disco Elysium, but it also affects every other game I've tried
• Steam AppID of the game: 632470 is an example, but not unique to a single game

System Information

• GPU: GeForce GTX 750 Ti
• Driver/LLVM version: nvidia 435.21
• Kernel version: 5.3.7-arch1-2-ARCH
• Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/qptain-Nemo/2058e70320020c202cbb89491c3659ea
• Proton version: 4.11-7

I confirm:

• [x] that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• [x] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

steam-632470.log

Symptoms

Adding PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 to the launch options makes any game exit immediately with the "Server is running with WINEESYNC but this process is not, please enable WINEESYNC or restart wineserver" output in the log. Running the whole Steam with WINEESYNC=0 seemed to work for a while but then modifying unrelated launch options (such as enabling the Steam overlay) made Proton fail to disable esync again. Deleting the prefix seems to fix it for one run, but then on a second launch it is ignoring these options and refusing to run again. This seems to be repeatable indefinitely. Steam outputs "esync: up and running." in the terminal when this issue manifests.

Reproduction

Passing PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 in the launch options to a game intermittently causes the issue for me.

[aeikum]

Good catch. Will fix, thanks for reporting!

[zany130]

Also get this issue with valkyrie chronicles deleting the prefix doesn't solve it for me nor does starting steam with wineesync =0

[aeikum]

This should be fixed in 4.11-8. Please retest.

[qptain-Nemo]

Tested PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 with Disco Elysium (several times) and Fallout 4. Seems to be working as intended without any additional steps. Thank you for your good work!

[zany130]

Fixed for me too.

[kisak-valve]

Thanks for retesting, closing as fixed.