In most cases, WARDOGS crashes on launch because of a single culprit: the Steam overlay conflicting with the game's startup process. Turn that off first — it's fixed the problem for more players than any other solution — and only move on to the next steps if the game keeps crashing. Below is the exact order to follow, from the fix that works most often to the rarest one. ## 1. Disable the Steam overlay This is the single most-cited fix among players who managed to solve the crash. Here's how: 1. Open your Steam Library 2. Right-click **WARDOGS** 3. Go to **Properties** 4. Uncheck **"Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game"** The built-in Steam overlay is conflicting with the game's boot process on several machines, causing it to crash before the menu screen even appears. Try launching the game right after disabling it — if this was the issue, it should open normally on the first attempt. ## 2. Check for third-party overlays and IME (text input) software If disabling the Steam overlay didn't fix it, the next suspect is anything that injects itself into other processes — because that directly conflicts with WARDOGS's anti-cheat measures, and the result is usually a crash with no clear error message. - **Sogou Input Method (common on Chinese keyboards):** switch to Microsoft Pinyin or close the Sogou process before launching the game. It injects a DLL into every open process, a known old problem with anti-cheat systems. - **AMD (Adrenalin) or Nvidia overlay:** if you're on an AMD card, close the driver overlay before launching — there are specific crash reports tied to it being active. - **Screen recorders, RGB software, other third-party overlays (Discord, MSI Afterburner, etc.):** worth closing all of these temporarily as a test, since any process that injects into other programs is a candidate for this kind of crash. The logic here: when the problem is "opens and crashes" (rather than simply not responding to any click at all), DLL-injecting processes are suspect number one after the Steam overlay. ## 3. Restart your computer It sounds too basic to work, but there's a confirmed report from a player who restarted their PC after trying everything else, and the game simply started opening normally again. Since it's the fastest step on this list, it's worth doing before anything more involved — you could even try it before steps 1 and 2 to save time. ## 4. Verify the integrity of the game files Corrupted installs are a common cause of generic launch errors in any game, and WARDOGS is no exception — especially since it's still in a testing phase, with builds updating frequently. 1. Steam Library → right-click WARDOGS 2. **Properties → Installed Files** 3. Click **Verify integrity of game files** Steam will compare your local files against the server's and repair anything missing or corrupted. ## 5. Check the crash dump file If the game opens, shows a screen, and then closes with an error, there's a dump file generated in the game's install folder at the exact moment of the crash. Open that file (or at least the accompanying log) to see what was running right before the game went down — it usually points to a specific driver or a conflicting DLL, which helps confirm whether the issue is the same as step 2 or something specific to your machine. This is the most technical step on the list, so leave it for after you've ruled out overlays, IME software, and file integrity — in practice, few players ever need to go this far. ## One factor that changes everything: the game is still in playtest/alpha Worth keeping in mind before you sink hours into this: WARDOGS is still in closed testing, so some of the instability being reported isn't caused by anything on your end — it's a bug in the current build with no user-side fix. The developers themselves acknowledge this in the official discussions. If you've gone through steps 1 through 5 and the game still won't launch, the issue may simply be on their side, and the only path forward is watching for the next playtest update. ## Watch out for this - **Don't reinstall the whole game as your first move.** In most reported cases, this fixed nothing, because the root cause (overlay, IME, driver) is still there after the reinstall — you just lose time redownloading everything without solving the actual problem. - **Don't disable your antivirus entirely as a permanent fix.** Some fixes for similar games (not WARDOGS specifically) suggest turning off Windows Defender protections to let anti-cheat systems like Denuvo or EasyAntiCheat install. If you need to test this, disable it temporarily just for the test and turn it back on right after — leaving your PC unprotected over a beta-stage game isn't worth the risk. - **Don't assume running as administrator will fix it.** In games with similar anti-cheat, this is a common forum suggestion, but plenty of players confirm it doesn't fix anything on its own and sometimes just changes the error message. Treat it as a last resort, not a first step. Keep this order handy — Steam overlay, third-party overlays/IME, restart, file integrity, crash dump — because WARDOGS is likely to crash again on some future playtest patch, and the first two steps alone already fix most of the reported cases so far.