steam game program installs but won't start

I installed steam gamer software from opensuse repos to run Universe Sandbox 2 process. I did a direct install and also an install from software manager.
The steam install won’t start up and is giving error messages as below:

/home/tom/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 138: DISTRIB_ID: unbound variable
/home/tom/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 152: DISTRIB_RELEASE: unbound variable
/home/tom/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 138: DISTRIB_ID: unbound variable
/home/tom/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 152: DISTRIB_RELEASE: unbound variable
Running Steam on 64-bit
/home/tom/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 138: DISTRIB_ID: unbound variable
/home/tom/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 152: DISTRIB_RELEASE: unbound variable
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(0)
libGL error: unable to load driver: nouveau_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: nouveau
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

But both of those driver files exist on my hardrive, i.e.,
/usr/lib64/dri/nouveau_dri.so , and
/usr/lib64/dri/swrast_dri.so

I am not a knowledgeable graphics person but I have leap 15.0, an nvidia card GeForce GTX 1050 ti (GP107 driver, and using nouveau graphics drivers according to Yast Hardware Info.

If the solution is to just add these paths to the library environment, I apologize but I can’t see how to add to LD_LIBRARY in leap 15. It doesn’t appear to be in my environment.
If there is another cause, I’d appreciate some guidance.

Please advise

Thanks, Tom Kosvic

AFAIK Steam requires the proprietary NVIDIA drivers. FWIW, I would not even try to run Steam games on the nouveau driver, but … I don’t use Steam, don’t game.
Installing them is not that hard:

  • Add the nvidia repo through YaST > Software > Repositories > Add > Community repos.
  • Start Yast > Software > Software manager, the correct drivers should be auto-selected for install.
  • Install them
  • Reboot
  • Try Steam again