After clicking the Play button in Steam you may see the icon turn to “Preparing to Launch” or “Running”, however the game does not launch and the button reverts to “Play” as if it had not been pressed.
🛠 Manually launch the game outside of Steam.
Sometimes Steam can block error messages from popping up, resulting in a crash at launch with no error message. Launching directly from the executable application folder can help better diagnose your issue.
- Open Steam and locate the game title in your library
- Right-click on the game
- Go to Manage
- Select Browse Local Files
- In the file explorer that pops-up, locate the game’s executable application file (AoE2DE_s)
- Double-click the file to run the application
This may not resolve your issue, but you might receive a pop-up error message that you had not received previously. Use the details in this new error message to help you troubleshoot the problem further.