pak01.vpk corrupt and crash

[filipedaa]

Reoccuring issue since shop update, every 2-3 days, game will crash with pak01.vpk corrupt error showing. This will come randomly, sometimes can cause it on start-up, sometimes in hero testing but annoyingly, in match sometimes. Will then need to verify files but this does not work right away (stays at 0 percent), usually need to restart PC twice which usually means i can get back in time but will be behind after missing for 4-6 minutes. First time it happened, I was marked as abandoned and put in low prio MM. My work around works but it is really frustrating. Any fix or ideas? Thinking back making a backup copy of the game to see if that is quicker to fix the error.

Strong PC too, Ryzen 7800x3d, 32gb ram, rtx4080S, two M2 drives, plus only a few months old. Never had this on my older, shitter rig.

 

[bragosh1982]

I have the same exact issue. I play normally and suddenly the game crashes with the pak01.vpk corrupt but it doesn´t say which of the pak01.vpk files so either you have to verify which for me never works or reinstall the game which takes some time.

Today it happened again so I reinstalled and made it to the game to finish the round but another one left so I got banned till tonight :\

 

[No Games McGee]

This issue has had my head spinning since the map update. I have spent countless hours this week pinpointing it. Here is everything I have figured out about this bug:

The crashes were repeatable, but the timing was odd - sometimes in the middle of the match, sometimes at the start of a match, while spectating and before loading into the match. They all pointed to .vpk as corrupt.

Logs consistently pointed to:

[ResourceSystem] Failed loading resource ...
WARNING: File might be corrupt or missing - 'pak01.vpk'
[Assert] basefilesystem.cpp : MarkContentCorrupt()

So I did everything I could to get it to work. I verified the files, reinstalled the game on multiple drives, cleared the download cache, switched regions and redownloaded, fully reinstalled steam and passed memory diagnostics.

The crash always returned, sometimes going away for multiple days, but when it came back I almost always got a ban so it was difficult to continue my testing. Steam validation reported "0 files failed" but runtime consistently marked pak01.vpk as corrupt during asset loading, I believe the hero model/skeleton for Dynamo may be the root of the issue as I have seen errors associated with it.

Steam was serving corrupted or mismatched .vpk segment files.

The files in particular are: pak01_029.vpk and pak01_042.vpk

Across reinstalls and verifications, Steam re-downloaded the same broken versions, which passed files checks but failed at runtime.

I obtained a working copy of the full pak01 archive (all segments and directory) from a friend with a crash-free install.

Here is what worked:
1. Closed steam
2. Deleted ALL associated .vpk files
3. Manually replaced with my friend's clean .vpk set
4. Verified files, steam marked two as corrupt (029 and 042)
5. Re-replaced just those two from the working set
6. Launched again without running validation

I have had multiple matches without a crash now and have had no pak01 corruption detected in logs. My logs right now are 100% clean of asset failures or assertion errors.

For other players -
Backup working .vpk files once stable and avoid steam validation unless necessary to avoid reintroducing corrupt segments.

For Devs -
Steam's CDN is consistently serving corrupted versions of pak01_029.vpk and pak01_042.vpk to some users. Steam validation does not catch the corruption, but runtime asset loading fails. Corruption only triggers once a match starts and affects in-game hero asset loads, not the main menu. The game marks the pak01.vpk archive as corrupt mid-session, often causing immediate crashes. I am happy to share file hashes or logs to resolve this issue.