WON/Retail versions of GoldSrc games incorrectly detect memory under Proton

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Half-Life
• Steam AppID of the game: N/A

System Information

• GPU: AMD Custom GPU 0405
• Driver/LLVM version: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 22.2.0 (git-17e5312102)
• Kernel version: 5.13.0-valve36-1-neptune
• Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/jbmagination/aa18233bdc797405d5141e644ccc7060
• Proton version: Proton Experimental (1689268633 experimental-8.0-20230713)

I confirm:

• that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

steam-13986811572144570368.log

Symptoms

The name of the game is listed at the top as Half-Life, since that's the most generic/popular game to put "all GoldSrc games" under, but I'm led to believe that this applies to any GoldSrc game that does a memory check, which only applies to WON/Retail versions of these games (as best as I can tell!)

• When running Half-Life: Uplink, I get an error that says Your system reported only -0.00K of physical memory, Half-Life requires at least 16MB.
• When running Gunman Chronicles, I get an error that says Your system reported only -0.00K of physical memory, Gunman Chronicle requires at least 16MB. (It does actually say "Gunman Chronicle" - the last S is dropped 🙃)

I'm going here to report this issue / ask for support because this has been incredibly hard to find any support for. This problem only happens to me under Proton.

Reproduction

1. Run a GoldSrc game from a retail disc
   a. Run the installer through a Proton-enabled non-Steam shortcut
   b. Change the target of the shortcut to where the game is installed (hl.exe/cs.exe/gunman.exe/etc.)
   c. Run the game through the same shortcut
2. See the error occur

Start with the attached steam-13986811572144570368.log and reproduce the failure using the listed hl.exe, cs.exe, or gunman.exe entry points under Proton. Compare the physical-memory result reported by the retail GoldSrc games with Proton behavior. Done means the affected games no longer report -0.00K and accept systems with at least 16MB of memory.