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Summary
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The launcher ships DXVK v2.7.1-1-gplasync as the only available version of the dxvk mod. DXVK 2.7 made the Vulkan extension VK_KHR_maintenance5 mandatory, removing the fallbacks that previously allowed older drivers to run (release notes).
Any GPU whose Windows driver does not expose that extension cannot initialise DXVK at all. This silently affects a whole class of hardware:
Intel Gen9 / Gen9.5 integrated graphics (HD 5xx-6xx, UHD 6xx, Iris Plus 6xx)
AMD Polaris and Vega on Windows (driver support discontinued by AMD)
Evidence
WoW_d3d9.log on an affected machine (Intel Iris Plus 655, driver 31.0.101.2141, Vulkan 1.3 capable):
info: DXVK: v2.7.1-1-gplasync
info: Found device: Intel(R) Iris(R) Plus Graphics 655 (Intel Corporation 101.2141.0)
info: Skipping: Device does not support required feature 'maintenance5'
(extension: VK_KHR_maintenance5)
warn: DXVK: No adapters found. Please check your device filter settings
warn: and a Vulkan 1.3 capable setup is required.
The device is Vulkan 1.3 capable. Only maintenance5 is missing.
DXVK 2.6.2 works perfectly on the same machine. Same GPU, same driver, same client — the adapter is found and the device initialises normally:
info: DXVK: v2.6.2-1-gplasync
info: Intel(R) Iris(R) Plus Graphics 655:
info: Driver : Intel Corporation 101.2141.0
info: Device properties:
info: Device : Intel(R) Iris(R) Plus Graphics 655
So this is purely a version-gating problem, not a hardware limitation.
Why users cannot work around it themselves
Both positions of the mod toggle are hostile to a manual downgrade:
Mod enabled → on every launcher start, d3d9.dll is hash-verified against v2.7.1-1 and replaced: [warn] dxvk: d3d9.dll failed verification; replacing ignoreUpdates: true does not prevent this — it only blocks version bumps.
Mod disabled → on every launcher start, d3d9.dll is deleted. The removal is silent (nothing is written to main.log) and does not consult installedFiles in settings.json — emptying that array does not stop it.
The net effect is that a user with unsupported hardware has no supported path: the game either fails to start or silently falls back to native Direct3D 9.
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Requested fix
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The mod already pulls from Ph42oN/dxvk-gplasync, which publishes gplasync builds for many DXVK bases, 2.6.2 included. No repackaging should be required. Options, in order of preference:
Detect VK_KHR_maintenance5 support and install the 2.6.x branch automatically on machines that lack it.
Expose a version selector in the mod entry so users can pin a 2.6.x build.
At minimum, do not delete d3d9.dll when the mod is disabled if the file on disk is not the one the launcher installed. Leaving a user-supplied DLL alone would be enough to unblock everyone affected.
Side note: hardware detection is unreliable
settings.json records the detected GPU as:
"gpuModel": "ANGLE (Google, Vulkan 1.3.0 (SwiftShader Device (Subzero)
(0x0000C0DE)), SwiftShader driver-5.0.0)"
That is Chromium's software renderer, not the real adapter. The launcher currently has no reliable view of the user's GPU, which is presumably why the incompatibility was never caught. Querying the Vulkan loader directly (vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices + vkEnumerateDeviceExtensionProperties) would give an accurate answer — and would also make option 1 above straightforward to implement.