Game crashing at launch since january

[valleyofscreams]

What happens is

i click launch on steam

the valve logo appears for 3 seconds then the in game cursor appears and the game closes itself with no crash report or error

i know it works because i used to play it on the exact same laptop before, i found a few threads with the same error but none had a solution to this, my friend had this bug too but it randomly went away for him, around january it started crashing after valve logo and since then i have not been able to play, this is really bumming me out, i tried reinstalling the game, updating drivers and even after wiping my laptop to clear it out it still crashes on a fresh install, i have found a lot of possible solutions online but none worked for me sadly

my friend recommended me to quickly try and open the console and take a screenshot of it before the game closed because the game does not generate crash logs, i am not sure how helpful this is but this is the screenshot of the console right before the game closes



the solutions i tried are

delete boot.vcfg
verify file integrity in steam and reinstall the game
launch steam/deadlock.exe as admin(tried both)
reinstall steam entirely (did not work)
launch with -vulkan and -dx11
launch in windowed/borderless mode
disable steam overlay
delete video.txt or replace video.txt with video.txt.bak

 

[Cuji]

Before getting too deep into debugging, I'd recommend you make sure your system is entirely up to date; both in terms of the OS, and GPU drivers.

What OS and version are you using?

 

[valleyofscreams]

Before getting too deep into debugging, I'd recommend you make sure your system is entirely up to date; both in terms of the OS, and GPU drivers.

What OS and version are you using?

i'm using windows 10 with the latest amd drivers, all are up to date, i also tried installing the amd drivers i had at the moment when i could play the game, but that did not work sadly

 

[Cuji]

Firstly, there are basic checks to get out the way before delving deeper - I'd make sure you do the following before looking at the next steps:

1. Are you running Deadlock from the Steam client itself, not the .exe directly a shortcut you made?
2. Does the game belong to your account? I.e. does this game appear in your library if you search for it or have you downloaded it via a family account?

So - in brief - the SteamAPI_Init function will fail because it's unable to connect to the client libraries. It can happen for a number of reasons, one is that Steam and Deadlock are running in different contexts. To check this, you will need to check the username associated with each running application, follow these steps:

1. Ensure Steam is running
2. Open the task manager, and navigate to the Details tab
3. Look for steam.exe and make note of the username associated with it (this is your Windows user)
4. Run Deadlock, and before it crashes see if you can observe what username is associated with it.

If you're unable to observe the Deadlock application in time before it crashes, you can make use of Windows Event Viewer tool:

1. Windows key -> search for "Event Viewer"
2. Once opened, navigate to Windows Logs -> Application
3. Run Deadlock, and let it crash so a fresh event is generated
4. Click on the latest Deadlock error event
5. At the bottom of the Event Viewer window you'll see a list of information associated with the event, including the User.

Both of the values should match up, otherwise the failure is a result of differing contexts so the application is incapable of accessing the Steam client libraries. If that is the case, I would recommend re-installing both Steam and Deadlock in the same context, so that they run in the same context by default. This just means installing Steam as a non-admin, and Deadlock via the Steam client. If this issue persists (and you've identified that it's a context issue) then you'll just need to find the respective .exe files, right click properties and make sure "Run as administrator" is unchecked.