For me, the most reliable way to get an apitrace out of Steam games tends to be the (actually somewhat discouraged) LD_PRELOAD method: start Steam itself from a terminal with LD_PRELOAD=...apitrace-build-dir/wrappers/glxtrace.so steam Of course, apitrace must have been built with the correct bitness (32 or 64 bits) depending on the game. Watch the log for messages about apitrace being loaded.