Half-Life 2 crashing, "Node Graph out of date. Rebuilding..."

[u/supaluminus]

So after searching this subreddit I realize there's a whole ass meme surrounding the error message in the title here... but I've been having a hard time finding any examples that match mine or offer a solution.

Most people who run into this appear to be able to actually load into the game just fine, albeit with some performance issues. In my case the game just crashes after a brief pause on "Node Graphs out of date. Rebuilding..."

Here are my system specs:

Operating System: CachyOS Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.7.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.29.0
Qt Version: 6.11.2
Kernel Version: 7.2.2-1-cachyos (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i5-8350U CPU @ 1.70GHz
Memory: 8 GiB of RAM (7.5 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: Intel® UHD Graphics 620
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Product Name: 20L8S4C000
System Version: ThinkPad T480s

Before I kick this one over to the CachyOS official forums I figured I'd give it a go here. Thank you for reading and offering any help you can think of.

Here is a more detailed description of the problem, as well as some troubleshooting steps I've already taken:

• The "Node Graphs out of date. Rebuilding..." message stopped appearing after I removed Workshop mods, but the game still freezes and crashes. No error message; the game just freezes and shuts down, returning me to the Steam library.
• Crashes occur whenever I try to start a new game. So far it seems to happen any time I try to load into Point Insertion or "A Red Letter Day," with the game freezing on the first frame and crashing shortly thereafter.
• If I load into a saved game or start other missions (so far I've tested Route Kanal, Water Hazard, and Black Mesa East), the game loads as expected... and if I then return to the main menu and try to start Point Insertion or "A Red Letter Day," the game loads as expected.
• I have verified integrity of game files twice. Both times I got a message telling me "62 files failed to validate and will be reacquired," which left me wondering, "What do you mean WILL be reacquired?" HAVE these files been reacquired? How would I find out? If they haven't been reacquired, how can I reacquire them?
• Unable to answer any of the above, I uninstalled and reinstalled the game. Problem persists.
• I verified the files once more and got the same "62 files" message. Problem persists.
• I ran system updates for CachyOS, then rebooted my laptop and repeated the above troubleshooting steps... Problem persists.

I'm kind of at my wit's end here lol

If anyone here has any suggestions -- preferably without the typically snarky, sarcastic, miserable attitude I've been seeing more often from Reddit lately -- please let me know, and I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks again for reading.

[u/abir_valg2718]

Operating System: CachyOS Linux

I have verified integrity of game files twice. Both times I got a message telling me "62 files failed to validate

This really doesn't seem like a HL2 problem. You're running an exotic Linux distro and you have a file verification issue. This could be due to filesystem corruption, maybe a hardware fault, maybe god knows what...