Steam help for PC

[CuriousRick]

I am having trouble with a couple games on Steam and looking for suggestions. A friend gave me Barony. It installed just fine no problem. But it won’t play.. I hit the play button. It shows it launching, then running then the hit play button is back. Game never opens. I have followed the instructions I found online. Clearing download cache etc. I even uninstallled steam and did a fresh download. Still same ol shit! Any ideas?

 

[RustyRedheadSpitfire]

That usually means the game is crashing immediately after Steam hands it off.

A few things I’d try before pulling out what’s left of your hair:

* Verify the game files (you’ve probably already done that).
* Run the game’s executable directly from its install folder instead of launching through Steam. Sometimes it’ll throw an actual error message instead of silently dying.
* Check Event Viewer (Windows Logs → Application) immediately after trying to launch. If Barony crashes, Windows often records the faulting module (DLL, graphics driver, runtime, etc.).
* Disable overlays (Steam, Discord, MSI Afterburner/RivaTuner, GeForce Experience, etc.). They cause more weird game launches than people realize.
* Make sure the Visual C++ Redistributables and DirectX runtimes are current. A surprising number of games still depend on them.
* If you have more than one GPU (or integrated graphics plus a dedicated GPU), force the game to use the dedicated card.

A couple of questions:

* Does every Steam game do this, or just Barony?
* Does Barony ever appear briefly in Task Manager before disappearing?
* What version of Windows and what graphics card are you running?

The answers to those three questions would narrow it down quite a bit.

Katie

 

[CuriousRick]

That usually means the game is crashing immediately after Steam hands it off.

A few things I’d try before pulling out what’s left of your hair:

* Verify the game files (you’ve probably already done that).
* Run the game’s executable directly from its install folder instead of launching through Steam. Sometimes it’ll throw an actual error message instead of silently dying.
* Check Event Viewer (Windows Logs → Application) immediately after trying to launch. If Barony crashes, Windows often records the faulting module (DLL, graphics driver, runtime, etc.).
* Disable overlays (Steam, Discord, MSI Afterburner/RivaTuner, GeForce Experience, etc.). They cause more weird game launches than people realize.
* Make sure the Visual C++ Redistributables and DirectX runtimes are current. A surprising number of games still depend on them.
* If you have more than one GPU (or integrated graphics plus a dedicated GPU), force the game to use the dedicated card.

A couple of questions:

* Does every Steam game do this, or just Barony?
* Does Barony ever appear briefly in Task Manager before disappearing?
* What version of Windows and what graphics card are you running?

The answers to those three questions would narrow it down quite a bit.

Katie

Thank you for the response. It ended up being an out of date driver. I was shocked that a low graphics game needed an update.