[HELP] Fatal Error - Steam Must Be Running To Play This Game [SOLVED]

[HDLuke]

I recently was gifted the bundle of don't starve together beta from a friend and I played it without any problems for about a week. Then, after not playing for about 2 days and trying to run it, I got the message [Fatal Error - Steam Must Be Running to Play This Game]. I've tried many fixes that I've found online but none have fixed it.

Solutions I've tried:
Restarting Steam
Restarting Computer
Running as Admin
Renaming/Deleting the BLOB file. (can't remember the exact name of it, something with registry)
Deleting and Re-installing game.
Deleting game, restarting computer, and re-installing game.

Most threads just say "Yep, restarting it helped!" but not for me, please help!

[The Giving One]

Can you give us some detail as to what you see when you double click the steam client shortcut ? Error messages ? Strange PC activity if any ?

[HDLuke]

There's nothing different about my PC, the only thing strange is that when I click on the game it says Steam Must Be Running, even when I click Play through the client.

[The Giving One]

That does not really answer my question here...you skipped the step of logging into your account using the client that I was asking about...

Check this list for programs you may have...Read my next words CAREFULLY please....post what programs you have from that list linked here...

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9828-SFLZ-9289

[HDLuke]

When my computer first restarts, every time I open steam it has to go through some updates which I feel takes sort of a long time. (2-3 minutes) Then after steam opens up, I just go straight to my games, and click on Don't Starve Together, and then I get the error message. The only other game I've tried to run is Banished, which worked fine.

As for the list of programs, I did recently install AVG PC TuneUp 2015. Just the free trial, which doesn't fit the list exactly but I'm not sure if it does have an impact. It's only a free trial though so I'm going to uninstall it and try that.

The only other two that I saw were BitDefender, which I had before I even installed the game so I don't think that made a difference, and Skype. Sorry if I missed any other questions you had.

[The Giving One]

Ok ...thanks for the complete description here that you posted.

I have seen AVG, Skype, and BITdefender be causes of some issues here in the forums. I cannot say if not having them will surely fix your problem, but why not eliminate the possibility, right ?

I personally have Avira for antivirus and I do not have issues with Steam here.

EDIT...if you are seeing this error in only the one game (Don't Starve), perhaps someone has suggestions in the game forum also unless you already looked there.

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/#games

[HDLuke]

Well, now I feel extremely foolish but I must thank you for your help, specifically the link you provided that conflicts with steam. AVG PC TuneUp appears to have been the conflicting program, so after uninstalling that and restarting my computer I was able to open the game.

Thank you very much, hopefully that paragraph explains to people how the issue has been resolved.

If you are having this same issue, check to make sure none of your programs conflict with steam through this site.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9828-SFLZ-9289

Thanks again, The Giving One.

[The Giving One]

Very kind of you to reply to let us know you got it fixed and what you did to fix it. Thanks for your appreciation also and being a good user here on Steam...good luck to you and happy gaming always !

[Skullwyrm]

i heard this in other discussions but after this all of my games worked again:

[This probably won't help, but it's the only other thing I can think to suggest - go to your Steam menu, select Change User, then log back in as yourself.]

edit: i hope i'm not disturbing anyone cuz i'm so late