Won't run in Windows 11

[bba525]

Bought a new gaming box which unfortunately came with Win 11. Downloaded and installed Endless Space 2, and it won't start.

It seems to load, shows the splash screens, but when it finishes loading it just immediately exits back to Steam. I tried resetting permissions for the whole folder, but no luck.

Anybody have any ideas or suggestions?

[Juuken]

You're in luck, my friend. Just saw this and had the same issue. Here ist the solution: https://steamcommunity.com/app/573100/discussions/0/3196993316877456645/

As you can see, this is not the only game with such an issue.

[Coiler46]

Worked. Thanks!

[halbsodoppelt]

It fixed starting the game for me too.
But its incredibly dark now - like someone set the brightness-settings for Endless Space 2 to 10%.

Anyone got a fix for this problem?

EDIT:
Setting launch options

-force-opengl

fixed this for me.

[DnyXy]

Still not working on windows 11, refunded.

[Bozobub]

Another likely fix for this, if the one above does not work, is installing ALL codecs. See, each new version of Windows drops certain older codecs, and this inevitably starts crashing older games. I personally like the "Mega" version of the "K-Lite Codec Pack", but the biggest CCCP pack is probably also sufficient.

https://codecguide.com/download_k-lite_codec_pack_mega.htm <- You'll want the "Full" installation.

Media Player Classic is an optional install with it, I totally recommend it as a video player, it's significantly better than VLC, but it's not the focus of the fix =) .

[georgefc3]

You need to run ES2 as administrator. Go here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Endless Space 2

and right click and change the exe file to run as administrator..

Let me know if this helps!

[ninakoru]

Originally posted by georgefc3:

and right click and change the exe file to run as administrator..

I believe you only need to run it as administrator once, not great to leave executables with admin rights permanently.

[The Ultimate Gamer]

Yea, this solution worked for me! Ninakoru is right, you only need to use administrator once. Then the game works on its own.