https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50779
--- Comment #4 from Rafał Mużyło galtgendo@o2.pl --- So, either I need to slightly correct myself or there's an additional element in play, that I fail to identify.
Turning off winegstreamer via WINEDLLOVERRIDES does mitigate the damage, but doesn't 100% prevent the freeze. That is it slows down the growth of the number of threads used, but it still keeps growing.
Now, the problem with that potential additional element is following: while WINEDLLOVERRIDES seems to affect at least some of the sound effects, it seems to be just wav files. But for whatever the reason, it seems to not affect ogg files at all, they seem to go through dsound.dll DSound8 interface and are being played even when winegstreamer is disabled...and I have no idea how.