Steam must be running to play this game: Resident evil 4

[MightyBardin]

So my friend bought me resident evil 4 and after installing the game and clicking the play button a box pops up asking if I want to allow this game to make changes to this computer, after clicking yes I would receive a fatal error saying steam must be running to play this game.

I tried rebooting my steam and my computer, Uninstalling and reinstalling the game, verifying integrity of game files, deleting a few files and verifying again (which reinstalled missing files but didn't fix the problem), running steam and the game as admin, adding steam.exe to the files as one forum suggested, I tried clicking no on the allowing to make changes (pretty much nothing happened), and reinstalling steam. None of these solutions have worked.

I have asked around on the games discussion page and have received no answer that has solved the issue. Has anyone else experienced this with any other game or this game and found a solution to the problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[SINNER]

hello .
i did encounter this problem once , it was when i wanted to run the game through the desktop shortcut .
i just ran the game from my steam library ( not the folder , the app ) and it was solved .
oh and by the way if you have a background recording software like nvidia geforce experience then you might want to disable it before you launch the game otherwise the game will crash on CAPCOM logo .
BTWs make sure the game is not ran by administrator and not in any compability mode .
hope this helps you .

[MightyBardin]

I boot all of my games from the library.

[SINNER]

i think you are running game or steam or both of them as administrator mode , try disabling this option and running the game again .

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

If it asking for administrative permission, then run Steam as admin, if doesn't work, head to where the game .exe is located and run as administrator, if neither, then not administrator.

Do not mess with your system security administrator permission, if you're not sure what you're doing.

[MightyBardin]

is there any other solution anyone may have? running in admin on both, separately in admin, and both not as admin and it still won't launch, I've even tried reinstalling steam.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Do you use any anti virus like norton, avg, avest, or etc???
You did any mods to the game???
Did you mod the Steam files?

maybe this might help give an idea.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/218620/discussions/14/154645299387616550/#c154645299388317108

[MightyBardin]

I have disabled the virus protection, and I just got the game so I have no mods.
I have not modded the steam files either, so I'm not sure why this game is doing this. My friend bought it for me and the second I attempted to play this for the first time I got this error.

I probably should specify that this is the only game of my 80+ games that receives this error.

[Brujeira]

Unfortunately, sometimes just disabling the antivirus isn’t enough - you wind up having to uninstall it completely and swap to a different brand. Which one do you use at the moment?

[MightyBardin]

the windows defender.

[Brujeira]

Originally posted by MightyBardin:

the windows defender.

The inbuilt one’s usually OK. It might still be worth installing a free one like Avira to see if it makes any difference.

[MightyBardin]

So good news as I suspected the error came from a misplaced file. Specifically one named steam_appid. Which is a text document. Once I moved it in the vicinity of the app, I stopped receiving the error and now the game just crashes the second I click play. So a minor victory but at least I don't have to see that stupid steam must be running to play this game annoyance.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Odd, as doesn't have any files named that by it file download.
https://steamdb.info/depot/254701/

Maybe something here can help.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/254700/discussions/0/1743358239842426397/