As stated in the topic adding steam_api_key to the [lutris] section of ~/.config/lutris.conf does now work as it should per Add private steam API key to fetch private data · Issue #3461 · lutris/lutris · GitHub
Additionally, the steam_api_key setting is removed from the config file when lutris exits.
FWIW, I am running lutris 0.5.19 as provided by bazzite.
Output of ‘lutris --submit-issue’ can be found at lutris-issue-report.json - Pastebin.com
Output of ‘lutris -d’ here as it is minimal:
2025-07-20 19:04:13,606: Command 'wine' not found on your system
2025-07-20 19:04:13,774: Couldn't find a terminal emulator.
2025-07-20 19:04:14,034: The Battle.net source is unavailable because Google protobuf could not be loaded: Descriptors cannot be created directly.
If this call came from a _pb2.py file, your generated code is out of date and must be regenerated with protoc >= 3.19.0.
If you cannot immediately regenerate your protos, some other possible workarounds are:
1. Downgrade the protobuf package to 3.20.x or lower.
2. Set PROTOCOL_BUFFERS_PYTHON_IMPLEMENTATION=python (but this will use pure-Python parsing and will be much slower).
More information: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/news/2022-05-06#python-updates