Linux: Why don't I have any audio?

If you have a local version of the libSDL2-2.0.so library that does not have audio support you will not get any audio unless you tell the OS to pre-load our version of the library. In our experience, this situation can occur when a user compiles their own version of libSDL2-2.0.so from source without telling the ./configure script to include support for the audio formats we use.

To preload our version of the library, the game can be launched with the LD_PRELOAD environment variable:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/pillars2install/PillarsOfEternityII_Data/Plugins/x86_64/libSDL2-2.0.so /path/to/pillarsinstall/PillarsOfEternityII

If you're using Steam on Ubuntu 16.04+, the paths default to (note the backslash-escaped spaces):

$ LD_PRELOAD=~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Pillars\ of\ Eternity\ II/PillarsOfEternityII_Data/Plugins/x86_64/libSDL2-2.0.so ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Pillars\ of\ Eternity\ II/PillarsOfEternityII

Users have also seen success by launching the Steam client in this manner to not load host libraries:

$ STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0 steam