I just had that happen to me. I'm on Manjaro Linux with an Nvidia Quadro M620. It worked okay when I relaunched the game and tried again twice (the first re-attempt failed because my time ghost's cube randomly disappeared).

I have a solution you have to go into the local files of Thinking with Time Machine then you have to go to the portal2.exe properties click on compatibility click the checkbox that says run with compatibility mode and then select windows 8 then accept ok and run the game through steam start.

Originally posted by nenderson:

I have a solution you have to go into the local files of Thinking with Time Machine then you have to go to the portal2.exe properties click on compatibility click the checkbox that says run with compatibility mode and then select windows 8 then accept ok and run the game through steam start.

How many times did you try before and after enabling compatibility mode? I think it working for you afterwards may be coincidental. The crash is both intermittent and cross platform.

this literally just happened to me

Happened to me too. I know I wasn't in compatibility mode but WOW!!! Like how was that crash even virtually possible?? Kind of toxic that the console activation setting has been disabled in the first place so that you can't have fun your own way, even through cheating or debugging. Shouldn't be anyone's business, not even developer's, if you decide to play a singleplayer game that is sold to you, or given free without any catch.

Check out my review:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/profiles/76561199202885525/recommended/286080/

This issue happens to everyone

Because there is no update for the fix.