Game constantly crashing for months

[karlince]

Over the past several months Deadlock has repeatedly crashed in seemingly random times - every time with a similar error (see Integrity Error attached). I submitted a support request to Steam and they suggested I post here.

I typically verify integrity before playing the game and did so this morning (see Verify Integrity Success attachment), but the game crashed immediately after launching. I restarted the game and tried to launch it again and it froze while downloading new content (see Downloading content froze attachment). I then rebooted my computer and launched Steam, verified integrity of game files again which succeeded and launched the game. This time I was able to load into a match and then crash 30 seconds into the game. I could not reconnect as I could not get the game to launch. I finally managed to relaunch the game after completely logging out of Steam and back in but when I clicked "Rejoin" it crashed again.

This has happened repeatedly over the past several months so is not isolated to a specific update or patch and has resulted in me receiving a temporary ban from matchmaking in the past. I have received it in all sorts of different situations, after I've played a few matches, when I first launch the game, in bot matches, watching replays, when im testing heros, etc.

So far I have tried:
- Completely uninstalling and re-installing the game.
- Uninstalling the game and installing on a different SSD
- Verify integrity of files every time I launch the game
- Disable Steam Cloud and Cloud overlay
- Run the game executable as administrator

 

[karlince]

Just happened again....this is INCREDIBLY frustrating!! I cannot reliably play this game anymore...Do any devs or support techs read these forums??

 

[gameskippy]

What are you components? (CPU, GPU, Windows version, etc)

 

[karlince]

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950x
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Asus motherboard
32gb ddr4 memory
Windows 11, but it was happening on Windows 10 before I upgraded

 

[karlince]

I got advice from another player to try resetting my video settings every time I launch the game, but that did not help.

 

[gameskippy]

Did you try manually deleting that file referenced then doing the integrity check? Just specifically deleting that file, perhaps the entire folder it's in. It's possible uninstall doesn't delete everything, or maybe there's a TEMP folder somewhere not getting deleted entirely.

I had issues before that was CPU because I have a 13 gen Intel that presented as GPU issues, I wouldn't expect the same thing with an AMD but I underclocked my CPU heavily and haven't had issues since.

 

[karlince]

I have tried deleting the file(s) referenced. Most of the time it is the pak01.VPK file that is referenced, but I have also seen the main map file midtown_dl, or something like that, referenced. When I delete the file and then verify integrity it says "One file is missing and will be redownloaded". I launch the game, it downloads content and all seems to work, but it does not permanently fix the problem.

Thank you for responding btw

 

[karlince]

Could Invisibility mode in Steam chat effect something like this? I do use that frequently, but I have never paid attention to see if they are linked. or maybe the "Full Screen Focus Behaviour"? It does seem to happen more often when I am Alt-tabbed, or the game isnt in focus.

 

[karlince]

Finally managed to get the game open and I'm temp banned until 5PM...FML

 

[gameskippy]

Okay so here's something possibly, I see you are using a D: drive instead of the default C: Drive, on this other similar issue the dude is using an F: drive, perhaps it could be because your files aren't on the default drive location and it's causing some weird issue?

A

Thread 'Deadlock keeps crashing and banning me for 24 hours'

Apr 23, 2025

Hey Guys,

i have a problem with Deadlock, i cant play the game for severals days now. The game crashes for me after seconds or minutes after i joined a game. And rejoining is imposible too. I get banned every day for 24 hours but its not my fault. I have no clue if its my Pc or Deadlock. I only want to play the game lol. I updated, verified integrity and reinstalled the game, nothing helps. Maybe someone here has a clue^^ other games run fine, i have no clue^^

• achimfechner86
• Replies: 2
• Forum: Bug Reports

Wouldn't completely make sense, just trying to look for similarities between the issues. On my last computer I stored the game files on a separate drive as well, not when I had deadlock but it did create some issues on some early release games that expected files to be on the C drive instead of my other one...

 

[karlince]

Unfortunately I have tried installing on both drives - when that didn't work I uninstalled and completely deleted the installation folders because I thought maybe Steam was looking in the wrong place or getting confused, then re-installed and that didn't help.

 

[gameskippy]

Unfortunately I have tried installing on both drives - when that didn't work I uninstalled and completely deleted the installation folders because I thought maybe Steam was looking in the wrong place or getting confused, then re-installed and that didn't help.

Oof damn, yeah I'm not sure. There's got to be some kind of commonality with the other threads that have the same issue.

Maybe reinstall steam? Manually delete the TEMP files that are in hidden folders related to steam/deadlock. I don't think that will fix the issue, but it might be a step to check off that somebody at Valve would ask you do to.

Check if you have a BIOS update available for your motherboard, there might be some weird edge case with AMD (although doubtful). Or any other updates.

Do you have your graphics settings set pretty low? Make sure any NVIDIA settings are off and maybe even try Vulkan, try a bot game so you don't get banned.

It's weird you've had the issue for a long time. I'd say it's the new patch since the forum is full of FPS drops/issues but not if it's been for months.

 

[Fergus Bentley]

The only thing that helped my constant crashing was lowering video settings to the minimum. From there I've gradually increased them until I started crashing again and found the best balance of video quality and stability. YMMV but this is what I ended up with: