First, sorry for opening a new thread, I am aware there are already multiple threads on Epic Online Services and NullReferenceException. Unfortunately after trying to get 7D2D to run for hours now, nothing has helped so far and this is my last resort.
[The Story]
Yeah, I just completed assembling my brand new PC w/ i5-13600 and a GTX 3080,. Everything (and every game) runs smoothly ... so back to one of my all time favorites, back to z-smashing 7D2D. Hitting the Download-Button on Steam and a few Minutes later, program starts and presents me with a " Could not fully initialize Epic Online Services" Error. So I hit "play offline", generate my little survivor from scratch and start a PreGen Map. BANG - console shows up with a red line telling me something of a NullRefernceException. Game freezes and I need to alt-tab out and kill the process to get back. A few hours of googleing, cleaning everything with the launcher tool, adding AV exceptions and the like, shutting off Windows Firewall (EOS) - but nothing changes. I cannot get the game to load.
[Some additional notes/observations]
- PC w/ Win11 is almost virgin - so everything is freshly installed and totally clean
- No use of mods or anything other than a clean install
- Verifying game files, uninstalling and re-installing changes nothing
- Downloading additional VS redistributables changes nothing
- adding/removing EAC changes nothing (admin or not)
- Shutting down Windows Firewall/AV changes nothing
- trying to connect to EOS on port 443 fails w/ bad access
- https://api.epicgames.dev/sdk/v1/default?platformId=WIN is reachable though browser though
- Reverting to Alpha 19.6 works like a charm. Game fires up and runs smoothly - but this cannot be the solution
I am bit desperate so I will gladly try every idea you may have. Here's one of the many output logs: https://pastebin.com/embed_js/Dj21uf5S