Borderlands 3 Not Launching in Steam

[Ferule]

Heyo, I've just downloaded the game, uninstalled it, re-downloaded it, then tried turning off my antivirus and after each of these trouble shooting steps (with restarting OS between) the game refuses to launch. Does anyone have any recommends?

[answers_]

maybe try verifying the game just to make sure all your files were successfully installed if that doesn't work then I'm not sure

[Shinigami]

Yep, try to verify the game file integrity to be on the safe side. If it still won't launch, you may have a corrupted configuration file. You could try backing up your BL3 folder in Games and letting a new launch of the game recreate it and the contents.

Following an update, I once had to get rid of one of the config/ini files from there to get the game to start fresh and let me choose my preferred graphics settings after I had messed around with them a bit too much.

[Ferule]

Thanks for responding. I found the issue to be Avast's Driver Updater program that had disabled my dedicated graphics card driver, among others. My mind is blown that I paid money for that trash...

[Nebula]

Please please tell me how you fixed the problem, I think I'm having the same issue and I'm loosing my mind

[answers_]

Also maybe your anti virus isnt blocking it, I remember my black ops 3 back in the day wasn't working due to my anti virus

[Ferule]

Simple fix: factory reset and DON'T INSTALL ANY 3RD PARTY DRIVER UPDATER!!!

I said simple, not easy.

The short of a long story is that Avast Driver Updater had touched ~127 of my drivers, some of which (e.g. my 3050ti) were made useless and the hardware was unseen by my system. While I likely could have found the drivers for the hardware I knew to be failing manually, knowing the number of drivers touched by the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ malicious software was huge, I opted for a full system reset. It worked perfectly.

I had an older laptop with the driver updater on it for years and over time a number of hardware pieces failed (bluetooth, camera, WiFi, microphone, and now I'm betting graphics card). I have not gone back to my machine to factory reset it, but I suspect when I do I'll find it was in much better condition than I thought, simply limping because of Avast.