Trying to run the game from the console gives the following error:

codexdraco@IRONPC:~/GOG Games/X4 Foundations Spanish$ ./start.sh
Running X4: Foundations (Spanish)
./X4: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.1.0.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The libssl package is installed, I even installed an old package from the previous version of my distro and it didnt work.

$ apt list --installed | grep libssl

libssl-dev/stable,stable,now 1.1.1d-0+deb10u2 amd64 [instalado, automático]
libssl1.0.2/oldstable,now 1.0.2t-1~deb9u1 amd64 [instalado]
libssl1.1/stable,stable,now 1.1.1d-0+deb10u2 amd64 [instalado]

I'm don't know how to proceed, short of installing libssl from source :S

You brave souls.

Question: Why wouldn't people ship games as docker images?

There are few references around. Seems a lot of people reference the one for Hyperlight Drifter.

Basically, they probably didn't pack a copy of libssl.so.1.0.0 for dynamic linking, and 1.0.2 should be API compliant with 1.0.0, so you can try symlinking it. There are two ways to go about that depending on the game.

I'm not in front of a linux box right now, so I can't give you absolute paths, but find where libssl.so.1.0.2 is installed (/lib, /usr/lib. etc.). cd to that directory and symlink it in place—example:

cd /lib
sudo ln -s libssl.so.1.0.2 libssl.so.1.0.0

Alternately, if you don't want to pollute your system dirs, find where in the game tree the library files have been provided and try symlinking there:

cd /path/to/game/libs
ln -s /lib/libssl.so.1.0.2 libssl.so.1.0.0

You are kind of quoting the wrong person. I resolved one of my problems by symlinking too but my game has no problem finding open ssl. No clue why the game finds this and not that on one system and the other way around on the next.

Thanks for writing it clearer than I could have.

Yes, yes. I've been rolling around these parts long enough to know you're perfectly capable ;)

I was replying to the bit about the solution being around here somewhere. I just wanted to link and paraphrase a popular solution here so others don't have to hunt for it.

The issue's becoming more and more common with a number of libraries as developers continue porting using (only) Ubuntu 18.04 LTS compatibility as a common denominator. Most commonly it's libssl, libcrypto, or one of the sound libs.

There's nothing wrong with 18.04 (Bionic) as a base—among others, I run a Mint 19 box to maintain 18.04 software compatibility, and I quite like it—but they don't always test against the interim releases to watch for changes, nor do most devs update their releases for compatibility.

It's a cycle, but it's what the forums are here for :)

Not THAT capable but thank you. Just weeks since I made my first symlink ever.

Hi! Thanks for the reply. I can confirm that doesn't work as that was one of the first thing I tried. The game seems to check for the specific version of libssl.so.1.0.0 and abort with 1.0.2. That's unfortunate. Researching this issue I learnt that OpenSSL 1.0.0 is no longer suported upstream and 1.0.2 support will be dropped this year. I don't know why are developers targeting this ancient version of the library. It will get worse when the next year a new LTS Ubuntu releases and if it drops the ancient libraries then you'll have to hope that devs update their Linux packages.

Anyway, I eventually got this issue fixed by, as I mentiones in my OP, compiling OpenSSL from source. It wasn't too inconvenient for me since I do that sort of thing for work every day, but that's definitively too much to ask for the mayority of people.

I certainly do not have that old version either but no complaints about it here, strange.

I ran into this issue with the missing libssl files a few days ago. This thread helped push me in the right direction, and the fix that worked for me on Pop!_OS 19.10 is below:

Download the old libssl libraries from this link: (note that if you're running a 32bit OS, this version may not work for you)
security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl1.0/libssl1.0.0_1.0.2n-1ubuntu5.3_amd64.deb

DO NOT install that .deb package, instead extract that file to a temporary location.
Within the extracted files, extract the file "data.tar.xz" to the temporary location.
In the temporary location, navigate to "./usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/"
From there, copy the files "libcrypto.so.1.0.0" and "libssl.so.1.0.0" to your game's install folder in the subfolder "./game/lib/". (For me, this was "/home/USERNAME/GOG Games/X4 Foundations/game/lib/")

You cannot play the game on a 32bit OS anyway so moot.

Thank you so much for the link. That solved the problem, and I think it is the better and cleaner method than symlinking into the currently installed libraries.

Never mind, just me who messed up.