(1.32.264) Game crashes on startup

[etde2]

I cannot start the game anymore, the following error always occurs while loading the game. Beta does the same. Please see attached image & the txt file has the "Details" content. Removing the local C:\Users\Shadow\Documents\My Games\Shadow Empire does not help.

One note, I'm not on a regular physical Windows box. This is a Shadow PC https://shadow.tech/eu/ cloud gaming PC, probably a VM. But I've played many games on this and never had any problems aside from some anti-cheats refusing to run on a VM - but then they said so, not crashed. It should be a normal Windows PC for most intents and purposes but yeah, there is that.

[Vic]

can you click details button and copy & paste the text that it will give you?

[etde2]

It should be already attached as the 2nd attachment - can you see it?

[Vic]

Sorry for slow response. Issue appeared just before my rather long summer holiday. It is most probable it is anti-virus software interfering. Like Windows Defender. Try switching it off as a test or exempting the directory where the saves files are.

best wishes,
Vic

[etde2]

No worries, a well-deserved holiday! Thank you, I appreciate the answer.

To my knowledge there is no anti-virus installed on this machine apart from Windows Defender (I haven't installed one and I don't think one comes pre-installed).

I have added the folder C:\Users\Shadow\Documents\My Games\Shadow Empire where the savegames are to Defender anti-virus exclusions, but unfortunately this did not solve the problem. Temporarily disabling real-time protection from the switch in the settings did not help, either (and it would not really be an acceptable solution). Completely uninstalling Defender sounds so hacky that I think I'm not going to attempt it (I'm not a Windows expert, and this also would not be really acceptable long-term).

I can't think of any other similar thing to do. There's almost nothing installed here, only official nvidia drivers, Steam and a few Steam games. I uninstalled a few pre-installed apps I did not need, but that did not help, either.

I'm about to let this VM go in a few days, so for now this is becoming a moot point for me personally. I suspect this might be related to this particular platform (Shadow Empire not working on a Shadow of all places... ironic) and I'm not sure how much of your time this is worth. But in case I can still help in debugging during the next few days I'm happy to do it, time allowing.

I'm not sure this info has any debugging value to you but Advanced Tactics Gold works for me without problems on the same machine.

All the best!