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Steam games fail with "Failed to initialize Steam" on any secondary Windows user (v1.5.9) #540

Description

@NicollasCorreia

Environment

  • Duo version: 1.5.9
  • Windows 11 Pro 25H2 (Build 26200.8875)
  • Steam latest stable client
  • Moonlight
  • Two separate Windows user accounts
  • Two separate Steam accounts
  • No Steam Family sharing
  • LuaTools (each account has its own library)

Problem

Steam works perfectly on the primary Windows user.

On ANY secondary Windows user (including newly created users), every Steam game fails to launch.

Steam console shows:

CreatingProcess
Game process added
WaitingGameWindow
Completed
Game process removed

The game exits immediately.

Some games display:

Failed to initialize Steam

This happens with:

  • Dark Souls Remastered
  • Free Steam games
  • Multiple unrelated Steam games

Important

The exact same games work correctly on the primary Windows user.

The issue affects every secondary Windows account.

Already tested

  • Fresh Windows 11 Enterprise installation
  • Fresh Windows 11 Pro installation
  • Completely formatted PC
  • Fresh Steam installation
  • Re-downloaded all games
  • Created completely new Windows users
  • Removed steam_master_ipc_name_override
  • Tested with Duo running
  • Tested without Duo running
  • Tested by logging directly into the secondary Windows account
  • Steam Client Service installed correctly
  • Same behavior persists

Steam Console

Steam successfully creates the process:

Game process added

Immediately after:

Game process removed

No Steam console errors are shown.

Additional information

This looks very similar to issue #251 and issue #373, but the problem persists even after a clean Windows installation and affects every secondary Windows user.

Could this be related to Steam isolation or SteamAPI initialization for secondary Windows accounts?

Activity

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