About
Escape from Butcher Bay is a prequel to the film Pitch Black, casting players as the antihero Riddick as he breaks out of a brutal triple-max prison. Built on Starbreeze's own engine, it blends first-person stealth, melee, and gunplay and is widely regarded as one of the best movie tie-in games ever made, winning praise for outshining the films it is based on. A Director's Cut Windows port added higher resolutions and extra content. The game was later delisted from digital storefronts after the Universal license expired.
Identity
Launch
- Binary
- System/Win64_AMD64/SbzEngine.exe
- Needs files
- none beyond the binary
Proton
- Version
- GE-Proton
- Winetricks
- —
⚙ Setup notes
About: Starbreeze's acclaimed 2004 stealth-action prequel to Pitch Black, delisted (later folded into Assault on Dark Athena).
Proton: Runs well on Deck under Proton/GE-Proton. Reports use the GE-Proton runner.
Binary: Point Steam at the 64-bit DRM-free System/Win64_AMD64/SbzEngine.exe — the 32-bit System/Riddick.exe (and Win32_x86_SSE2/) ships with SecuROM that fights Proton.
Fallback: If the 64-bit exe crashes or has visual glitches (reported with some D3D wrappers), fall back to the 32-bit Win32_x86_SSE2 build, which several users find more stable under Wine/Proton.
Controller: PC version has NO native gamepad support — set up a Steam Input keyboard/mouse mapping (or use the bundled community gamepad profile) for the Deck's controls.
The one thing to know
Supply your own copy: Delisted commercial game — must be owned. Not currently sold on any digital storefront (the standalone Butcher Bay was folded into Assault on Dark Athena, itself also delisted).
DRM blocker: The 32-bit Riddick.exe is protected by SecuROM, which misbehaves under Proton — use the 64-bit DRM-free System/Win64_AMD64/SbzEngine.exe instead.
Install method: Normal install (or copy an existing install folder), then add SbzEngine.exe as a non-Steam shortcut and force a GE-Proton/Proton version.
Controller: No native gamepad support; needs a Steam Input keyboard/mouse mapping.
Not hardware-tested for this recipe — binary, Proton version, and notes are research-based starting points.
Community guides
Write-ups and threads from people who got this (or a similar) game running. deckport links to them — it doesn't reproduce them.
Get the artwork
deckport never hosts game images. Open this game on SteamGridDB, pick
the cover / hero / logo / icon you like, and drop them into the
game folder under .deckport-art/ before you push it to the
Deck. The importer files them under the right names automatically.
Run it on your Deck
Two files: the one-time importer (deckport.py) in your
Deck's home folder, and this game's install helper. Copy the game
into ~/Games and run the helper with Steam closed — it
writes the recipe (binary, launch options, Proton version)
and registers the shortcut with artwork.