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I have bought a new laptop (i5 11th gen, Iris XE Graphics).

I have noticed that the two Unity based games I've downloaded on Steam (Judgment Apocalypse Simulator, and Motorsport Manager) refuse to start if the laptop is attached to the internet. If I switch off Wi-Fi and pull the plug the games run fine.

The error occurs very early in the run process and silently returns the game to the steam game page with the Run button green as it was when I originally pressed it.

I have successfully run Judgement on my previous laptop since upgrading so it's unlikely to be purely a Steam/Unity issue. People on the Steam forums with the same issue reckon that the same game bought through GOG doesn't have the problem (but that could be different hardware that doesn't have the issue).

Brand new W10 install, fully patched. I validated the install using:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth

Followed by

SFC /scannow

Steam and the games are all fresh installs but I validated the installs as well using steam.

Anyway, does anyone have any ideas how to resolve this? Thanks in anticipation

mcottle
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    Is this possibly a Steam DRM issue? Does Steam tie a purchased game to a particular computer? – Jeff Zeitlin Jun 02 '21 at 12:56
  • @JeffZeitlin Interesting, I hadn't thought of that. In my experience games are tied to accounts not hardware. I have steam installed on 3 different laptops now with different mixes of games from my library. As long as I don't try to game on two computers at once it's let me play any game on any laptop up until now. – mcottle Jun 02 '21 at 13:00
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    I think your best bet is to contact the game maker’s support. – Daniel B Jun 02 '21 at 13:03
  • @DanielB I've been getting great help from the Judgement developer but it's really not his problem because the issue affects multiple games and his game does run on different hardware or if the network is disconnected - this seems to be one of those nasty little issues that falls between multiple vendors. I'd guess there's a problem with the way Unity calls a Steam component that wants to run early on but only if the computer is online. – mcottle Jun 02 '21 at 13:09

1 Answers1

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According to the designer / lead developer of Judgement there is a known issue with Unity, Steam, and the reasonably new Intel Iris XE graphics system.

Unity apparently will patch this, but only for supported versions of the engine (which is unfortunate but understandable I suppose). This means that all older games built on the Unity engine will have this issue.

The workaround is to disconnect from the internet - unless & until one or more of Unity / Valve / Intel provide a fix to allow older games to run without crashing.

An even easier workaround is to block an affected executable from going through the firewall. That's worked great for me.

Hope this helps someone.

mcottle
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