I am trying to run NMS offline game on PopOS using wine. It installed fine and there were no errors, but when I launch the game it goes through the "Hello Games" screen and then after leaves me on a screen with a red spinning circle forever.

This video demonstrates the same issue: to get an idea of what it looks like. There are two error messages from wine, but I don't think it is an issue with wine b/c the game launches fine:

00f8:err:sync:RtlLeaveCriticalSection section 00006FFFF92ADFC0 "dlls/msvcp90/misc.c: _Lockit critical section" is not acquired
00f8:err:combase:RoGetActivationFactory Failed to find library for L"Windows.Internal.System.Profile.RegionPolicyEvaluator"

Let me know if more information is needed or what the red circle means. I think it might be some authentication issue b/c in the video I sent, he mentioned having to log back in again.


Gog.com was not letting me do my previous post because of the video URL, so here is an image of the circle in question instead.

I can't really help in this case, sorry, but I recommend the use of Bottles, Lutris or HeroicGamesLauncher. With these the game runs (at least offline) without any problems. It's easier to change runners etc.

With all three you can also use the Discovery Service if you have Galaxy running (with HGL even without Galaxy).

Unfortunately, there have been problems with the multiplayer for some time, so that it no longer runs everywhere without adjustments. For example I can currently only get the MP to run with Lutris+Galaxy, but others can also run it with Bottles+Galaxy. I don't know what the status of the current version with (only) HGL is.

You probably wouldn't even have to reinstall the game, but could import your installation.

Thanks for the recommendation! Bottles did the trick. I honestly still don't know what the problem is, but that's alright.

OK I actually found what was causing this error. You *don't* need Bottles to fix this, it will run perfectly fine on regular Wine. My mistake was not something incredibly technical, it was just incredibly stupid. I stored all my game files on a drive that was formatted as FAT, this was a problem b/c FAT has limitations like not being able to create symbolic links etc.