So what I just did (I triple-checked my X11 session is running on the 950M) is play factorio for an hour and then quit the game (of course after 'sync'ing all my files first), and I didn't encounter a driver crash. This was done with game version 0.17.4. I then launched the game (after Steam was don...

My graphics card are a nvidia 950m and an intel HD 530, for completeness sake.

This has in fact not been resolved in 0.17 and is an issue isolated to the Nvidia closed source binary driver. The OP claims that pkill -9 lets you quit the game without freezing your system, but it is not so - it's a 100% certainty that your entire video/display will freeze if you launch it and the...