Ever since the "Auraximas" update in December 2025 the game has been plagued by a bug dubbed by the community as "flash or crash": Some short time after logging into the game or changing continents the game would crash without any error code. Not every player was affected but there are a lot of reports about this.

A workaround was found by immediately spawning any vehicle (with the "Flash" quad bike being the cheapest) and sitting in there for 2-3 minutes (staying on the loadout/respawn screen apparently worked as well for some). (Playing on Linux instead of Windows would also prevent this - although there was a phase where this also happened to Linux players).

However this could be a problem for new players as they are required to go through a tutorial where they may not be fast enough to get to the point of spawning a vehicle.

While the devs released some patches where the bug was seemingly fixed, it would later get reintroduced. There were a lot of fingers pointed at a connection with the BattleEye anti-cheat system (maybe not the software itself but its implementation) but during an update in September it was noted that "at the moment, we do not see any evidence in our logs that the anti-cheat system is contributing to the current situation")

Which brings us to last week, where a user did some debugging and seemingly found the root cause of the crash and presented a possible solution.

The workaround is consistent with a timing race. Asset streaming, worker scheduling, graphics callbacks, and background exception traffic can all change the chance of an active dispatch overlapping the broken cleanup window.

BattlEye is NOT the reason for the crash. BUT disabling it changes exception traffic and timing, which can make the race less likely for some players. The broken cleanup code is still inside the client either way.

That's why one player crashes almost every login while another player rarely sees it.

Fast forward to October 15th, where a hotfix is released that - as of now - fixes the bug. However with no credit being given. The devs haven't gone into detail either except one discord post saying: "we've looked it over but are not going to reveal specifics about it due to the sensitivity of the subject, but I can say it was not the solution the person had hoped".

The same user who found it also compared the changes introduced with that new fix, concluding that:

Based on that, I think it is very likely that my report helped them locate or confirm the bug, since I showed the exact line of code and the exact address causing the crash, which has been fixed in this patch.

As said, they didn't copy my implementation. They fixed the same problem I reported in the way that worked with their own build and protection pipeline.

I guess this may be another case where players fix the game for the developers.

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58731

User Nostalgia_Realm used GPT-6 Astra to decompile dgvoodoo2 to check crashing of the utility on Linux/Wine environments

I used **GPT-6 Astra** to investigate the supplied dgVoodoo2 binaries. It identified the relevant code and produced a working fix in approximately **17 minutes**. I then personally confirmed that Snail Mail’s Tutorial renders and responds correctly with the patched DLL.

The findings point to **a Wine-specific code path inside dgVoodoo2 as the cause of this regression**. No changes to Wine were needed to remove the reproduced crash.

The relevant code does the following:

1. Walks the process’s loaded-module list and locates `NTDLL.DLL` using an encoded name.
2. Reads its export table directly and searches for names containing `wine_get`, such as `wine_get_version`.
3. Conceals that substring comparison behind arithmetic and numeric constants, rather than a readable Wine-identification string.
4. When Wine is detected, takes a path that skips clearing two graphics-state values. Redirecting execution to the normal clearing path removes the reproduced failure.

This was confirmed in **2.82 and 2.87.5**. The corresponding check was absent from the supplied **2.8** D3D8/DDraw binaries. Every intervening release was not individually analysed, so this does not establish the exact release that first introduced it.

The fix is very small once the affected DLLs are unpacked:

- **2.82:** change one branch-displacement byte in each affected D3D8/DDraw DLL so that the state-clearing instructions also execute under Wine.
- **2.87.5:** change one instruction byte per Wine-export detection routine so it returns “not detected.” There are **23 copies across 22 DLLs**, including both copies inside the ARM64X D3D9 DLL. The two D3DImm DLLs lack this check.

With the original DLLs, Snail Mail crashes and a separate DirectDraw test fails during surface creation. With the patches, Snail Mail runs and the DirectDraw test passes drawing, pixel readback, and cleanup. DXVK was still needed for D3D11 translation.

**I strongly suspect deliberate interference with Wine compatibility**, given the obfuscated Wine detection and the harmful path it selects. Intent cannot be established conclusively from this evidence alone, but the Wine detection itself, and its connection to the reproduced failure is concrete. The earlier comment’s more specific D3D12-pointer explanation was not independently established.

He then continues

About this bug report, I am not a coder. I cannot say with 100% certainty that this is a Wine issue. However, the evidence GPT-6 Astra produced seems to point to malice from Dege. He intentionally sabotaged his app to not run via Wine. I'd say this means we can close this bug report and make it a community effort to introduce an open source alternative that can do the same. I think that's a much better use of our time and AI compute ;)

Has not happened yet but I believe it would happen in the future

User Nostalgia_Realm also said he might provide patched dgvoodoo2 builds in his website

Dege has a history with being against linux for a long time

https://web.archive.org/web/20251111024553/http://dege.fw.hu/dgVoodoo2/ReadmeGeneral/#watchoutfor#watchoutfor

And also https://github.com/lutris/dgvoodoo2/issues/5#issuecomment-3520470529

What to be expected, according to open source cancer-like development practices (it'd be nice to bet money on this):

you keep it until your d7vk or whatever is in development, using MY stuff for reverse engineering the api implementation details (instead of an old win xp/7 machine, just to save yourself a lot of work, I mean, years of work), being paid by an ugly capitalist company, and then all the sect members and random clueless idiots will be ranting all over the net that you're the best

then and only then you will ditch dgVoodoo, the "propietary shit", independently on what the quality of your crap is like

but, in the meantime, at least anybody can read into how much you're being loved

TLDR:

1. dgvoodoo dev creates intentional sabotage in software code to not run on linux
2. dev lies and crashes out on Lutris's github and his website about how sabotaged environments are inferior and because they cannot run newer versions of said software
3. gets caught red-handed after a user decomped his software

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