Launcher Problems - Persistent "Steam runtime communication error"

[Nameless_Ensign]

Hiya,. two or three days ago I started to get this message whenever I try to start up Stellaris. After looking around I discovered the solution of deleting the Launcher v2 and its associated files, which seemed to work. However I booted it up against yesterday and hit the same error. Figured maybe something messed up I retried the solution, yet again the game worked fine. Today the same exact thing happened, further testing shows that reinstalling Launcher v2 will only work once and then break for me. Considering the onset of it doesn't coincide with any game patches, and that the fresh installs say I need to restart for it to update, I'm guessing the problem lies somewhere within a launcher update that you guys pushed a few days ago, testing other games with the Launcher v2 seems to confirm this as a launcher problem and not a specific game problem.

Ultimately my question is, is there a way to rollback launcher patches for myself or to keep it from updating?

And yes, I've tried allowing it past my firewall and running Steam as an administrator.

 

[AndrewT]

There is no way to go to older launcher patches, no. However it doesn't seem likely this is a bug in the launcher, otherwise everyone would have this odd need to constantly reinstall it!

The games you have that use the launcher CSL, HOI4, EU4, Stellaris and PA all use the same launcher installation, so it's unsurprising they all get the problem at the same time.

To your actual symptom, typically when I've seen that it's needed a game reinstall not a launcher reinstall. So I'm surprised a launcher reinstall does it for you, something must be different here.


Next time it happens, in this folder are some .log files:
C:/users/<UserName>/AppData/Local/Paradox Interactive/launcher-v2/
Please attach them here.

 

[leon_dave]

I ran into a error on July 19 with the game not wanting to launch with an access to game files error. The error is still there on July 20. I am running the launcher v. 2020.9 on my mac for Stellaris (Wells 2.7.2 (60bf) . The error I am getting is "Access Error to Game Data",,,, " we don't have read/write access to the directory with game data. Please contact support.

I have no problems over the last week of game play and then this error occurs. What do I need to do?

 

[Nameless_Ensign]

Next time it happens, in this folder are some .log files:
C:/users/<UserName>/AppData/Local/Paradox Interactive/launcher-v2/
Please attach them here.

Here are all the ones that actually have text in them

 

[AndrewT]

I ran into a error on July 19 with the game not wanting to launch with an access to game files error. The error is still there on July 20. I am running the launcher v. 2020.9 on my mac for Stellaris (Wells 2.7.2 (60bf) . The error I am getting is "Access Error to Game Data",,,, " we don't have read/write access to the directory with game data. Please contact support.

I have no problems over the last week of game play and then this error occurs. What do I need to do?

This is a different problem, on a different OS, than the one discussed in this thread. In future please make your own fresh thread, thank you.


Is your MacOS User Documents folder on your local disk, or has iCloud grabbed it? If the latter, that's a problem with the launcher at the moment - can you move it back?

If that's not the issue, then it's probably a file access/permissions issue in MacOS. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy. Then select the Privacy tab. Scroll down to files and folder in the left column. You’ll see a list of apps and the folders they need access to. Check the box to give access.

Allow accessibility apps to access your Mac

Specify which apps can access and control your Mac for accessibility purposes.

support.apple.com

 

[AndrewT]

Here are all the ones that actually have text in them

Those files all look perfectly fine, no errors or problems recorded.

Can we try a game reinstall instead of a launcher reinstall, see if that fixes it for you as it does for other users?


- move any valued save games elsewhere, and user_empire_designs.txt from /Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/ if you have made any custom empires or races.
- "uninstall" in Steam-Stellaris
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Stellaris AND Documents/Paradox/Stellaris folders
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add stellaris.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

In particular you need to make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam Stellaris or Documents Stellaris locations, before installing again.

 

[Nameless_Ensign]

Same error again, it errors out in the launcher and attempting to play anyways throws up a SteamAPI error. Can't be mods because the launcher doesn't even recognize I have them anymore since it can't connect to Steam to download them. Just a yellow triangle.

EDIT: Did a bit more testing, manually installing previous launcher versions (2020.7 and 2020.8) work perfectly fine (until it updates that is), so I'm a bit more convinced that the launcher update 2020.9 is the cause somehow.

 

[AndrewT]

Why that launcher version would cause this to you and so far as I know no one else, I cannot see. Certainly not everyone using it!

You could try opting into the next launcher version 2020.10 , which is in Settings - "Receive beta versions of launcher".

 

[Nameless_Ensign]

Why that launcher version would cause this to you and so far as I know no one else, I cannot see. Certainly not everyone using it!

You could try opting into the next launcher version 2020.10 , which is in Settings - "Receive beta versions of launcher".

That didn't work, but I do believe I found the issue after you mentioned it seems to only effect me. Figured I should think about 'what is different between me and everyone else for my launcher to mess up', and from there it kind of hit me when I realized it was all errors related to Steam. Like 7-8 months ago when Steam changed the UI I reverted to an older version and disabled updates. I let it update and bam, no errors. So I figure something in the .9 launcher update caused problems with those with outdated versions of steam (purging older code I'm guessing), but no one else reported it because so few people actively stay on the old versions.

 

[AndrewT]

Indeed, I am sure your analysis is exactly correct - we only test on current Steam versions.

Well done, all the best!