VAC Challenge Timeout, happening almost every other game now.

[andystiles88]

I know there are other posts on this issue but none of them are actively being talked about or being updated. For reference, I've had this issue for roughly a week now maybe a little longer. This is an issue that is affecting my ability to play at all. I have:

Ran the Steam repair as suggested in one of the other posts, nothing.
Played on a different PC, same issue.
The current PC I use for gaming has a fresh install of Steam AND Deadlock.

I barely run anything on my PC other than the game itself and some music, no outside firewalls and I even double checked to make sure that there were no errors or exceptions with Steam or Deadlock itself. At this point it's forcing me to abandon more or less every third game, even restarting the client after every game to prevent supposed memory leaks (This was a rumor I'd heard wasn't sure if it was true) does nothing.

I really enjoy the game very much, I don't want to be permanently banned for something that's outside of my control. If there's other potential fixes please anyone who knows what could resolve it I'd be very grateful for any information you might have. As I've multiple hundreds of hours in the game not being able to play is a bit frustrating and I'd like to fix the issue from my end if that's possible.

For those who are unaware of this issue, my game will crash and upon trying to rejoin I will be handed a "VAC Challenge Time-out" error that essentially tells me to reinstall the client and Steam. No matter what I do after this message appears I am unable to rejoin at all, this includes restarting my PC, Steam, Deadlock, whichever. Any advice would be great thanks!

 

[spacepillow]

Yup, I'm getting this same thing. Started maybe a few weeks ago or so for me..? I've been unable to figure out a root cause. Closed a bunch of programs, did the steam repair thing and nothing.

I just want to play the game but occasionally this happens. It's weird, too. Sometimes I'm perfectly fine and other times I get this. Verifying the game cache doesn't help, neither does anything else. If I try again later it'll work, probably, but I can't get back into the game I just got into.

Possible coincidence: I sometimes listen to lectures as I play and they're on my second monitor. This is hard to test because I'm not expecting it and I can't really test what does and doesn't cause it, but (and this is complete guesswork), MAYBE it has something to do with me going fullscreen on my second monitor, or playing a video there? This also came about at roughly the same time as steam game recording but I don't think that's it.

And while I do have that hint of something there, I've definitely been able to watch lectures while playing Deadlock before, and I don't know why it works sometimes and not others. I don't think it's programs that I have open.

I'm trying to think of what else it could be. I have a performance autoexec configuration from https://github.com/w0nxyApex/Deadlock-Tweaks-config/tree/main which I have had and it doesn't seem to be causing issues, but it is one thing. I'll try seeing if it has any impact whatsoever but it basically doubles my framerate and prevents framedrops which I am quite happy with.

 

[spacepillow]

Yup, I'm getting this same thing. Started maybe a few weeks ago or so for me..? I've been unable to figure out a root cause. Closed a bunch of programs, did the steam repair thing and nothing.

I just want to play the game but occasionally this happens. It's weird, too. Sometimes I'm perfectly fine and other times I get this. Verifying the game cache doesn't help, neither does anything else. If I try again later it'll work, probably, but I can't get back into the game I just got into.

Possible coincidence: I sometimes listen to lectures as I play and they're on my second monitor. This is hard to test because I'm not expecting it and I can't really test what does and doesn't cause it, but (and this is complete guesswork), MAYBE it has something to do with me going fullscreen on my second monitor, or playing a video there? This also came about at roughly the same time as steam game recording but I don't think that's it.

And while I do have that hint of something there, I've definitely been able to watch lectures while playing Deadlock before, and I don't know why it works sometimes and not others. I don't think it's programs that I have open.

I'm trying to think of what else it could be. I have a performance autoexec configuration from https://github.com/w0nxyApex/Deadlock-Tweaks-config/tree/main which I have had and it doesn't seem to be causing issues, but it is one thing. I'll try seeing if it has any impact whatsoever but it basically doubles my framerate and prevents framedrops which I am quite happy with.

Oh, and to be clear I'm not using the autoexec options thing, just the autoexec.cfg that says it has graphics/performance optimizations and the 1:1 zoom sensitivity, along with the video.txt which just turns down the graphics settings. Are you using any of these out of curiosity?