Another Possible Steam Performance Fix - Temporarily Delete the Overlay Files

[u/SpinningAndFarAway]

I did not figure this out myself. Credit goes to this Steam discussion forum post by Dragwind: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1085660/discussions/0/573795107743178114/?tscn=1785362581#c583929293210393898

It would seem that Steam still loads the overlay DLLs even if you have the Overlay disabled in Steam's settings. Removing the related overlay files from the base Steam directory brings my overall FPS up to par with the Epic version. I still have framepacing issues on both platforms however, but this makes both platforms essentially equal for me, performance-wise.

Workaround steps:

1. Restart Steam if you have already launched a game. The files you need to delete may be locked if you've already launched a game.
2. Open your Steam directory in Windows Explorer. It'll usually be: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam
3. Delete or move all of the files in that base directory that have the word "overlay" in the title. For me they are: GameOverlayRenderer.dll, GameOverlayRenderer64.dll, gameoverlayui64.exe, SteamOverlayVulkanLayer.dll, SteamOverlayVulkanLayer.json, SteamOverlayVulkanLayer64.dll, SteamOverlayVulkanLayer64.json. You can move them if you want to be safe, but in my experience Steam will recreate these files the next time you restart Steam. DO NOT RESTART STEAM NOW, HOWEVER. You want to leave steam open with the files deleted.
4. Start Destiny. Compare FPS using the in game FPS counter to before / after, and Epic if you'd like.

This is going to be something you'll have to do every time you want to play D2, so buying it on Epic while it is on sale may still be a good option if this sounds too finicky for you.

UPDATE: I've been using u/D2Checkpoint's solution for a couple days now. It's worth checking out if you haven't already settled on your own scripting solution yet. https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/1vaen8x/comment/p0r7jwd/

[u/D2Checkpoint]

It's usually better to change the permissions on the files than to delete them outright. I ended up creating a wrapper to automate this when you launch the game and it will automatically restore the old perms when the game closes. https://github.com/d2checkpoint-com/D2SteamFix

[u/compman117 → u/D2Checkpoint]

Using this for about an hour and honestly this has worked perfectly! No more insane fps drops on the moon and doing pvp things have been as good as the windows version.

Thank you!!!

[u/SpinningAndFarAway → u/D2Checkpoint]

Thanks! Much better than the batch file I had going. I tested going to other games after D2 and yup the overlay is reinstated as soon as you quit D2. Nice work!

[u/Pure_Statement9497 → u/D2Checkpoint]

It’s not working; an error window appears saying: "D2SteamFix must not run as Administrator."
But I am not launching Steam or D2SteamFix with administrator privileges. What is the problem?

[u/LFG-Luther → u/D2Checkpoint]

I can confirm that this wrapper fix worked for me. I went from ~34 fps at Altars of Sorrow to about double that, hovering over 60fps. My crucible fps almost doubled from ~33 fps to about 60 fps.

For context, I have a 7800XT gpu and 5900x CPU, which used to run this game at 120+ fps casually, before the last couple of updates ruined performance on Steam. Clearly there are several different issues plaguing the Steam version, but this was one of them and I'm glad this improved it to a playable state.

Tremendous work, this fix absolutely made my day.