steam purchase license seemingly revoked

[treos]

i purchased this game on october 15, 2022 on steam. i just tried launching the game from my steam library and now this game is telling me something is wrong with the license.

 

WTF? how many times do i have to get burned by fing corporate BS?!

i PURCHASED the game with irl MONEY and you're telling me i need to purchase it a SECOND time on steam now JUST because of this 1.0 crap? HELL NO!

 

i was going to buy this game again on psn so i could play with some friends who don't have PC's of their own. i am NOT buying a 2nd copy on STEAM after i already purchased it once!

 

and yes, this game IS still listed in my steam purchase history.

 

edit: and i just checked steamdb and it shows that you guys changed something related to the "steam or cd key" infor for the game recently. so, you screwed up something.

 

edit 2: and reinstalling didn't work.

Edited June 4 by treos (see edit history)

[treos]

all checked out with steam support but... why can i no longer play your game? steam is running, yet the game says it isn't and i cannot play even OFFLINE mode.

 

so...that's not really an issue on my side it seems.

[Beelzybub]

Check if your Steam app has any updates available.

From the Steam dropdown select Check for Steam Client Updates.

Also, verify the game files twice. If you haven't played the game since 2022, then also
open the Launcher/Tools/Clean game data... tab and check all the boxes and select "Clean".
Then try to start the game.

You don't need to repurchase the game for the 1.0 release.

[treos]

steam is up to date and i bought the game in 2022. i've played 125.2 hours since then. i just rarely play it cause i've always got plenty of other games to play and um...none of my friends really do much co-op on pc. but anyway...

 

verified twice...all clear...

 

"open the Launcher/Tools/Clean game data... tab and check all the boxes and select "Clean"."

did that and... no, still the same as in the above screenshot.

[Beelzybub]

24 minutes ago, treos said:

still the same as in the above screenshot.

Do the obvious and double check that Steam is in fact online and that other games will start. Assuming that is so...
Add exclusions for the game and save folders in your Antivirus/Security software. If you're using Defender, it looks
like this. (change to use your paths) If you have a different AV, look up how to add exclusions in that app. If that doesn't work,
upload your latest log file to pastebin.com and post the link here. Press F1 and press open log folder to access the log files.

[treos]

https://pastebin.com/3vS7DXiK

 

here's the requested log as that other stuff also didn't resolve this.

 

edit: hmmm...

"2024-06-04T05:39:59 9.511 INF [Steamworks.NET] SteamAPI_Init() failed. Refer to Valve's documentation or the comment above this line for more information.
2024-06-04T05:39:59 9.511 INF [Steamworks.NET] API could not be initialized - probably Steam not running."

 

probably this is the problem?

Edited June 4 by treos (see edit history)

[Beelzybub]

17 minutes ago, treos said:

probably this is the problem?

Seems to be. You could try this: Also, did you add the exclusions to your AV?

 

[treos]

checked and yes, steam is allowed on my firewall even though i already knew it was...

 

and i did set the exclusion...

 

all this has shown me thus far is that my initial assumption was correct and that this is NOT problem on MY end of things! this has all been a waste of time that has accomplished nothing. -_-

something in the game itself is not working. not anything on my pc.

[meganoth]

If this were a problem of the game thousands of players including myself would have the problem as well. The forum would be full with protesters. Since this isn't the case there must be something special with your situation and Beelzybub tried to eliminate all the common causes for various problems. Doesn't mean there can't be dozens of further causes we just didn't think of yet, especially since I can't remember seeing that error message here in the support section unless it was simply that steam wasn't running.

 

Since I know there are some users who let their PCs run 24/7, did you already reboot at least once after this happened?

 

Is there maybe some other software running that might interfere? For a test try to disable programs running in the background and foreground except for steam naturally.

 

Maybe try to launch the dedicated server. It uses an anonymous licence or no licence, would be interesting to know if that runs or not.

 

 

 

[SylenThunder]

You happen to be on an Insider Preview build?

 

If Steam is truly in Offline mode, you would not get the error message about it being unable to initialize a connection.

 

However, if you are running an obsolete OS that is no longer supported or one that behaves abnormally because it is still in development, Steam will have problems like this.

 

Since you have now excluded the game, validate the files three or four times. Once never fixes everything, and the second pass isn't much better.

 

Edit:  Also note that today is Steam Maintenance day. It could be possible that the Steam authentication servers in your area are just offline.

Edited June 4 by SylenThunder (see edit history)

[treos]

no, i don't have any weird programs running that would interfere with this. THIS IS THE ONLY GAME NOT WORKING FOR ME!

 

"If Steam is truly in Offline mode, you would not get the error message about it being unable to initialize a connection."

.....sherlocke...

 

"However, if you are running an obsolete OS that is no longer supported or one that behaves abnormally because it is still in development, Steam will have problems like this."

windows 11 here.

 

"validate the files three or four times"

I ALREADY DID THAT TWICE! doing that 3-4 more times will accomplish nothing. it checked out on the FIRST time.

 

the HELL is wrong with you people?! why are you telling me all this useless BS that has nothing to do with this problem and are all WASTING MY TIME? you're all just @%$#ING me off now!

 

i have already done everything i can on my end. nothing on MY pc is the problem here! that much was obvious to me from the start. because just the other day, this game was working. then i start it up last night and get some error about a license and now it's completely unplayable.

 

and i also already submitted that error log via pastebin.

 

and don't give me that "we're just trying to help" bs. cause NO YOU'RE NOT!

[treos]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

If this were a problem of the game thousands of players including myself would have the problem as well. The forum would be full with protesters. Since this isn't the case there must be something special with your situation and Beelzybub tried to eliminate all the common causes for various problems. Doesn't mean there can't be dozens of further causes we just didn't think of yet, especially since I can't remember seeing that error message here in the support section unless it was simply that steam wasn't running.

 

https://search.brave.com/search?q=7+days+to+die+"could+not+fully+initialize+steam"&source=web

 

turns out this problem is actually more common that you tried to make it out to be. and it looks to be a problem that dates back as far as 2020, if not further.

 

edit: resolved. it was nothing i could do to fix it. it was this FING DAMN WINDOWS 11 OS BEING STUPID!

 

rebooting the pc fixed whatever in WINDOWS had broken.

 

so, who knows. this whole situation could've been cause by literally ANYTHING when that is the fix.

Edited June 4 by treos (see edit history)

[SylenThunder]

40 minutes ago, treos said:

 

https://search.brave.com/search?q=7+days+to+die+"could+not+fully+initialize+steam"&source=web

 

turns out this problem is actually more common that you tried to make it out to be. and it looks to be a problem that dates back as far as 2020, if not further.

 

edit: resolved. it was nothing i could do to fix it. it was this FING DAMN WINDOWS 11 OS BEING STUPID!

 

rebooting the pc fixed whatever in WINDOWS had broken.

 

so, who knows. this whole situation could've been cause by literally ANYTHING when that is the fix.

 

Sounds like you had a Windows update partially installed that was pending a restart.  This will often cause problems with network connectivity, and other software issues.

[Riamus]

It's Windows... *always* try rebooting. 

[BFT2020]

2 hours ago, treos said:

the HELL is wrong with you people?! why are you telling me all this useless BS that has nothing to do with this problem and are all WASTING MY TIME? you're all just @%$#ING me off now!

 

i have already done everything i can on my end. nothing on MY pc is the problem here! that much was obvious to me from the start. because just the other day, this game was working. then i start it up last night and get some error about a license and now it's completely unplayable.

 

and i also already submitted that error log via pastebin.

 

and don't give me that "we're just trying to help" bs. cause NO YOU'RE NOT!

 

So in the end it was an issue on your computer.

 

And yes, people here were trying to assist you even though you came into the forums accusing TFP of doing something nefarious at the very start of your OP.

 

If you come into a situation already assuming things are not the issue, you are not being open-minded as fellow gamers talk you through steps to try and root cause the issue....because at the end of day, everyone's situation is different and we are trying to assist based on the information you provided.

[treos]

On 6/4/2024 at 10:35 AM, BFT2020 said:

 

So in the end it was an issue on your computer.

 

And yes, people here were trying to assist you even though you came into the forums accusing TFP of doing something nefarious at the very start of your OP.

 

If you come into a situation already assuming things are not the issue, you are not being open-minded as fellow gamers talk you through steps to try and root cause the issue....because at the end of day, everyone's situation is different and we are trying to assist based on the information you provided.

 

well, turns out...it's a Windows problem actually. or maybe programming in general since it turns out this problem can happen to other OS's like linux too!

 

a little thing known as "zombie processes". and i have absolutely NO means of fixing it on my end and neither do any of you guys because in all my researching it, it seems to be a kernel level issue and i have never allowed ANY kernel level stuff on my pc from any game or other apps.

 

i didn't think to check for this before because i didn't know it could affect STEAM but apparently it CAN! and this time? this time the game threw a motherfing EGS message at me! that is messed up.

 

as for the cause of these ghost processes (or rather how they happen)...lemme boot up the game now that i've rebooted and cleared those in pic 2...

 

ok, note the 3rd pic.

 

see that parent process on the yellow line? what'll happen is that process will be closed when the game closes BUT the ACTUAL process (the games process) is the child process beneath it and that process remains active as a suspended zombie process.

 

my pc is clear of malware outside of false positives according to defender and the only way i know of to clear zombie processes is a pc reboot. that's it. there's no other fix that i've come across AT ALL and once a zombie process happens, it's impossible to kill it. it doesn't appear in task manager and no method of manually killing it works even with admin level permission.

 

also, before you guys jump to any conclusions on this. no, this is not the only game affected. this crap can happen to any game, any app...hell, it even affects uninstallers. those ast few .db files an uninstaller normally deletes at the end of the process? they'll get stuck because the uninstaller or relevant app's zombie process is running and be stuck there till you reboot and manually delete them.

 

i don't know if anyone knows how to fix this and it's completely outside my realm of knowledge to even attempt to at all.

Edited June 5 by treos (see edit history)

[meganoth]

17 hours ago, treos said:

i don't know if anyone knows how to fix this and it's completely outside my realm of knowledge to even attempt to at all.

 

Zombie processes can be the result of race conditions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition ) or other bugs in the code, or even cosmic radiation (no joke, cosmic radiation can flip bits in your computers memory, though still a very unlikely event to actually harm operation as usually only a small percentage of memory is actually crucial to operation).

 

Often zombie processes can still be removed if you kill them with root aka administrator privileges, but the difficult thing is to find out that there is a zombie in your system. Many processes don't have a UI that gets unresponsive, so those processes can sit in your memory like a block of concrete and reserve a resource that another program may need (for example specific ports). This can often be seen by inspecting log files (of programs or of the operating system) but not even that is a sure thing.

 

So actually the best advice in case of strange behaviour of a PC is : reboot and check if the problem still exists.

 

 

Edited June 6 by meganoth (see edit history)

[treos]

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Zombie processes can be the result of race conditions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition ) or other bugs in the code, or even cosmic radiation (no joke, cosmic radiation can flip bits in your computers memory, though still a very unlikely event to actually harm operation as usually only a small percentage of memory is actually crucial to operation).

 

Often zombie processes can still be removed if you kill them with root aka administrator privileges, but the difficult thing is to find out that there is a zombie in your system. Many processes don't have a UI that gets unresponsive, so those processes can sit in your memory like a block of concrete and reserve a resource that another program may need (for example specific ports). This can often be seen by inspecting log files (of programs or of the operating system) but not even that is a sure thing.

 

So actually the best advice in case of strange behaviour of a PC is : reboot and check if the problem still exists.

 

 

 

well, finding the zombie processes is actually easy since an app like system informer can track and show them while they won't appear on windows' task manager.

 

just tested to see if windows task manager might be the culprit and...

 

test 1: started the game without task manager running... process closed normally upon exiting the game.

 

test 2: started WITH task manager running and...a zombie process BUT said zombie died when i closed task manager for

test 3: without...process died normally

test 4: with...process died normally.

 

so...task manager might be related somehow but isn't the root cause...

[SylenThunder]

Since what you are experiencing is completely against the way Windows typically runs, I would suspect that you have a more serious core system issue occurring.