Steam games won't launch

[adriandong]

So on Steam, I click the "play" button and it says "Preparing for launch." After that, it shows next to the game that it's running, but a few seconds later it just stops. Does anyone know why?

[cretsiah]

getting an idea of
a) your system specs
b) which games your trying to launch
c) knowing whether its your first launch of the game
might help...

for instance my AMD FX 8320 with 16 gig ram 1600mhz
- Witcher 3 Wild Hunt
- The Master Chief Colection
took 40 mins on first launch to get to game
did go blank (as though nothing was happening, whilst saying game was running)
did get a black screen (not including screen saver / monitor power saving mode)

but so far games run fine, once running
subsequent launches have been faster

[SilFox]

...
d) does game have native steam support or You have to select Steam Play compatibility
e) is Steam Play officialy suported for particular game or You have to force it via "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool"

if so, You can browse HERE "Search games" and find great deal of users sharing their setups and fixes for any game on Steam.

[BrunoMiranda]

The very thing happened to me while trying to play The Stanley Parable Demo on Steam.
In fact, I was never able to get anything running on Steam (Doom 2016, Doom Eternal (both torrents) and The Stanley Parable Demo, downloaded through Steam). Gave it up!
Specially for The Stanley Parable Demo (I got it working with Lutris), I got to a point where I had errors from missing files and after going around the internets I've seen a lot of supposed solutions but nothing worked. This is not my idea for supporting games from the get go.
The Steam interface seems a very good idea but it still needs a whole lot of care until I drop a credit card number in there. There's no way I'm going to pay a lot of money and then the game fails to launch!
Torrents, WINE, PlayOnLinux and Lutris it is.

[rivasol]

...
d) does game have native steam support or You have to select Steam Play compatibility
e) is Steam Play officialy suported for particular game or You have to force it via "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool"

if so, You can browse HERE "Search games" and find great deal of users sharing their setups and fixes for any game on Steam.

I was having the same problem. Thanks for the information you provided. I hope I fix the problem.

[ugurcansayan]

...
d) does game have native steam support or You have to select Steam Play compatibility
e) is Steam Play officialy suported for particular game or You have to force it via "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool"

if so, You can browse HERE "Search games" and find great deal of users sharing their setups and fixes for any game on Steam.

I was having the same problem. Thanks for the information you provided. I hope I fix the problem.

My recommendation would be
1) Don't use NTFS for SteamPlay
2) Remove Proton, SteamLinux, Soldire, etc. in SteamLibrary>/steamapps/common

[BrunoMiranda]

My recommendation would be

2) Remove Proton, SteamLinux, Soldire, etc. in SteamLibrary>/steamapps/common

Shouldn't the Steam software do that by itself?
Know exactly what makes and brakes a game from working and take care of it out of the box automatically?
If they have the team for it and are charging expensive games supposedly supported and compatible on Steam, shouldn't they script the thing to work from the get go?
I can take the risk of downloading some torrent that doesn't work, it's not official and my responsibility after all. But paying high and hard earned money for a game claimed to run and not having it running in the end... Meh, I'd rather assume the risk of downloading torrents.
Damn it, I spent hours trying to get The Stanley Parable Demo running directly from Steam and it never worked.
Downloaded the torrent for the full game, spent some time on Lutris not exactly knowing what I was doing, and it is running.

[ugurcansayan]

I was having the same problem. Thanks for the information you provided. I hope I fix the problem.

My recommendation would be
1) Don't use NTFS for SteamPlay
2) Remove Proton, SteamLinux, Soldire, etc. in SteamLibrary>/steamapps/common

Shouldn't the Steam software do that by itself?
Know exactly what makes and brakes a game from working and take care of it out of the box automatically?
If they have the team for it and are charging expensive games supposedly supported and compatible on Steam, shouldn't they script the thing to work from the get go?
I can take the risk of downloading some torrent that doesn't work, it's not official and my responsibility after all. But paying high and hard earned money for a game claimed to run and not having it running in the end... Meh, I'd rather assume the risk of downloading torrents.
Damn it, I spent hours trying to get The Stanley Parable Demo running directly from Steam and it never worked.
Downloaded the torrent for the full game, spent some time on Lutris not exactly knowing what I was doing, and it is running.

Well you messed my quote.

I suggested removing /Proton, /SteamLinux* and /*Soldier folders in /steamapps/common because they can be misconfigured or copy&pasted from somewhere else. They need the correct configurations with permissions for SteamPlay to work. The way Steam manages games and content is through /steamapps folder, after removing those folders Steam client will notice their appmanifest_*.acf files are misleading and client will download and configure those. You can delete their respective appmanifest_*.acf files too, to be sure. The process is nearly full-automatic unless users configure and customize some settings