Game Not Launching

GriZz_UK89 · November 29, 2016

Whenever I try to launch the game from my desktop shortcut, at first the steam menu pops up for about half a second say "Preparing to Launch War Thunder" however this message will quickly disappear again, I've tried uninstalling the game, ending processes, turning off windows defender/ firewalls and even launching the game directly from steam, however nothing seems to work.

relliK · November 30, 2016

first check the game files in Steam (if you haven't already) by right-clicking on War Thunder in the Steam game library -> go to properties -> local files -> verify integrity of game cache

as a 'workaround' you may be able to start the game by running the launcher.exe directly in the War Thunder game folder (you can open the folder in the above given local files tab )

or if this doesn't work either you should be able to start the game by running the aces.exe either in the ..\War Thunder\win32\ or ..\War Thunder\win64\ folder (32 or 64 bit client) - in

this case you will have to deny the upcoming request to start the launcher to look for updates.

unfortunately starting the game directly wont give you access to the steam features (steam login and / or steam overlay) so this is definitely not a solution but as i said just a 'quick and

dirty' workaround to be able to play at all...

you said 'you uninstalled the game' - does that mean you uninstalled and reinstalled it on Steam ? if so - did you also delete the whole WT folder in your Steam game folder so you

had to download the whole game again or did it just take a couple of minutes (since uninstalling the game without manually removing / deleting the folder will basically just uninstall

a few files while the vast majority of the game will remain on the harddrive thus the installation may (still) be broken) ?

HighFlyinGorilla · November 4, 2017

I've tried reinstalling, ticking the WIP client (which at first produced no change), running as administrator (both by default & manually), and had inconsistent results at first, but now after once again reinstalling it seems that unticking the WIP client and downloading the corresponding files has solved the issue for good. Knock on wood.

Even when I was able to launch the game via running as admin, not only did it work inconsistently, often with a significant delay between launching the aces executable file and the game actually opening, but the game would ALWAYS freeze upon closing.

After the last bout of reinstallation and replacing the WIP files with the non-WIP files, game launches without delay, and no freeze upon closure.

It seems to be an elusive issue. I seriously pity the troubleshooters at this point, the support site has gone full AWOL altogether.