The 'Games Refusing To Work For No Reason At All' Thread

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

As someone who started gaming on a monochrome computer that was barely able to turn on, I'm no stranger to games just flat out refusing to work for me, despite obsessively checking the requirements on everything I could get my hands on / trade for — it's been as part of the journey for me as every high score or clutch victory ever was.

... But I'm not gonna act like it was some magical thing or anything, because it really made me want to ram my fist through the screen.

What are your "favorite" examples of this? Mine was the original Half-Life failing to work on a Windows 98 PC clearly able to run it (and working flawlessly when the very same computer upgraded to XP).

I also got a bit heartbroken when GTA: Vice City would run... At 10 FPS.

But la creme de la creme was Quake III — It would not only not work, but it'd mess up my graphic settings to the point of requiring a lot of tinkering with.

What about you?

 

[Aldia Aldia]

Fallout New Vegas

 

[nobitakun]

But I understand games not running for no reason means you meet their hardware requirements and they just don't work for unknown reasons, right? mmm then I don't recall any. The only problems I had with games not working or having issues were when I tried to run them with non supported OS or different hardware than expected, so I don't complain.

 

[Aldia Aldia]

I also got a bit heartbroken when GTA: Vice City would run... At 10 FPS.

I settled with the Reverse Engineered mod, works like a charm.
I made a backup of it a bit after it released, and the mod was taken down a day after that. :P

 

[ArchienineArchienine's icon]

MotorStorm Arctic Edge isn't optimized for PPSSPP, even if is a well-known game and there are games more demandant that run better.

 

[X y b e r - S k u ll]

For some reason, I’ve always had this problem with Devil May Cry 2. For context: I didn’t play DMC2 on the PS2 (My introduction to the series was actually 3 and 4, after which I then circled back play 1) but when the HD collection came out on Steam; I decided to try and give it a shot. Every time I’d select 2 in the menu, it would just crash and close itself, booting me back to my desktop. I want to reiterate this was never a one-time thing, this is EVERY SINGLE TIME I’ve ever tried to play it. Given that games reputation though, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s actually some kind of divine or cosmic force desperately trying to spare me from playing it lol. It might be a blessing in disguise.

 

[Not_Red]

GTA San Andreas on the 360 would either just not work as intended or constantly crash because they decided to port the mobile version rather than work slightly harder and do the same but with any other console version

 

[Chicken]

One funny moment of this situation that I remember was with Wizardry 8. So to give some context, the highest officially supported version of DirectX that could be used by the game is DirectX7. Which is also needed for a fan made widescreen patch to work, makes sense right?

Well the funny thing is that the game simply... refused to acknowledge DirectX7 at all. It's not like the file for it wasn't there, and it's not like my PC couldn't have supported it since this all happened around 2022 on Windows 10, so everything about my PC was up to date and literally no one else seemed to have that issue. So I ended up deciding to not play it with the patch and just stick with playing on the game's OpenGL mode. And then like a year or two later, I decided to reinstall the game out of the blue, suddenly everything worked and I was actually able to use the patch. I still don't understand why the game suddenly decided to have DirectX7 work again lol.

 

[Kovlak]

I'd like to play Killer Instinct Gold, but noooooo.

 

[ArchienineArchienine's icon]

GTA San Andreas on the 360 would either just not work as intended or constantly crash because they decided to port the mobile version rather than work slightly harder and do the same but with any other console version

I think that a update was released though? At least on PS3 a update was released and i think that fixes most major issues but the ocassional crashes are still present but both X360/PS3 versions sucks)

 

[BrawlMan]

For some reason, I’ve always had this problem with Devil May Cry 2. For context: I didn’t play DMC2 on the PS2 (My introduction to the series was actually 3 and 4, after which I then circled back play 1) but when the HD collection came out on Steam; I decided to try and give it a shot. Every time I’d select 2 in the menu, it would just crash and close itself, booting me back to my desktop. I want to reiterate this was never a one-time thing, this is EVERY SINGLE TIME I’ve ever tried to play it. Given that games reputation though, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s actually some kind of divine or cosmic force desperately trying to spare me from playing it lol. It might be a blessing in disguise.

You're not missing much, but I will throw you some bones.

Rushing Beat X will sometimes still crash, even on PS5. City Connection/Clear River games fixed the two major soft lock issues, but there are other ones I keep finding by accident every once in a while, or the game hard crashed once last night. I was in the middle of the hardest difficulty run, and the game crashed on me and froze. I sent in a report with a video file, so hopefully that reaches to them, but I don't think they're gonna patch this game again. I've noticed these crashes or soft locks almost always happen on the 5th stage.

 

[zombie100379]

i lost count the amount of pc games i downloaded that refused to work - i often say to myself "i bet this won't work" , when it does - its a huge surprise. for example a game called "stonks-9800 stock market simulator" never worked for me until maybe the games 5th update. its a constant a lucky dip.

 

[χKai]

In Uncharted Waters New Horizons I have been losing men left and right for no apparent reason at all and have not once been told I had gotten scurvy or rats or anything of the sort, just men disappearing for no reason after many days out at sea and then the game telling me I can't go on because we've lost the whole crew, despite rations being at 100 percent and carrying plenty of water and food

I just don't know what to do anymore, I think the actual ROM itself has a glitches SRAM but it's on NSO so I can't just delete the SRAM quick and try again

 

[cornpops]

Surprisingly, I have few historical examples. I was pretty successful getting things to work all through the gamecopyworld era.

Though, I did run into a situation back when Oblivion came out: everything was white. The game ran just fine, performance was great. But, the screen was white. The HUD was fine, and the title screen had no issues. Turns out it because I was on a Radeon 8500, a Shader Model 1.4 card. Oblivion required a card that supported the 2.0 Model. I nabbed a 9600 a little while later.

It was a common enough experience that Oldblivion got pieced together to solve it. Kinda wild to read some of these old forum posts:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion_Mod:PCS_Library/White_screen_(only_HUD_visible)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/924363-the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion/answers/80314-white-screen-kind-of-like-superbloom-cant-see-much

When i play Oblivion everything is white!

whenever i play oblivion, everything is white! i can only barely see a table with tan mugs on it. At the start though it says something like "oblivion will now detect your video hardware" i clicked on ok and instantly it said "hardware unrecongnised, video settings set to medium". Anyone know...

forums.tomshardware.com

That said, I run into these problems somewhat regularly these days because of Vulkan incompatibility with older Intel iGPUs on Windows. I daily drive a 2013 iMac; it hurts sometimes. I do have a 5070 rig sitting in a case in the other room, but I only take it out on special occasions.

Games sometimes refuse to run on a Steamdeck. Life sucks, you know.

 

[Aldia Aldia]

Surprisingly, I have few historical examples. I was pretty successful getting things to work all through the gamecopyworld era.

Though, I did run into a situation back when Oblivion came out: everything was white. The game ran just fine, performance was great. But, the screen was white. The HUD was fine, and the title screen had no issues. Turns out it because I was on a Radeon 8500, a Shader Model 1.4 card. Oblivion required a card that supported the 2.0 Model. I nabbed a 9600 a little while later.

It was a common enough experience that Oldblivion got pieced together to solve it. Kinda wild to read some of these old forum posts:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion_Mod:PCS_Library/White_screen_(only_HUD_visible)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/924363-the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion/answers/80314-white-screen-kind-of-like-superbloom-cant-see-much

When i play Oblivion everything is white!

whenever i play oblivion, everything is white! i can only barely see a table with tan mugs on it. At the start though it says something like "oblivion will now detect your video hardware" i clicked on ok and instantly it said "hardware unrecongnised, video settings set to medium". Anyone know...

forums.tomshardware.com

That said, I run into these problems somewhat regularly these days because of Vulkan incompatibility with older Intel iGPUs on Windows. I daily drive a 2013 iMac; it hurts sometimes. I do have a 5070 rig sitting in a case in the other room, but I only take it out on special occasions.

Games sometimes refuse to run on a Steamdeck. Life sucks, you know.

Oblivion only works for me if I turn off Bloom and HDR, because of that exact issue.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

But I understand games not running for no reason means you meet their hardware requirements and they just don't work for unknown reasons, right?

Exactly.

 

[bobsaget30]

As someone who started gaming on a monochrome computer that was barely able to turn on, I'm no stranger to games just flat out refusing to work for me, despite obsessively checking the requirements on everything I could get my hands on / trade for — it's been as part of the journey for me as every high score or clutch victory ever was.

... But I'm not gonna act like it was some magical thing or anything, because it really made me want to ram my fist through the screen.

What are your "favorite" examples of this? Mine was the original Half-Life failing to work on a Windows 98 PC clearly able to run it (and working flawlessly when the very same computer upgraded to XP).

I also got a bit heartbroken when GTA: Vice City would run... At 10 FPS.

But la creme de la creme was Quake III — It would not only not work, but it'd mess up my graphic settings to the point of requiring a lot of tinkering with.

What about you?

lol my 1070 pc broke the last day i had to return a 3080 pc i bought
then i got a new pc after that 1660 super i5 7500
every single game but osrs doesnt work. and the hardware is fine according to the shops
i have to wonder whats up with that ? lol
so weird.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

lol my 1070 pc broke the last day i had to return a 3080 pc i bought
then i got a new pc after that 1660 super i5 7500
every single game but osrs doesnt work. and the hardware is fine according to the shops
i have to wonder whats up with that ? lol
so weird.

Every computer ever:

 

[Zerpina]

Pretty much, choose your Bethesda game....

I actually like them more when they crash. Now, I know that's weird, but you know good and well, Bethesda games don't need a reason to crash or a mod. They like to crash straight out of the box, so to speak.

It's always funny to run, say, Fallout: New Vegas, get 20 minutes into it, use VATS, and then it crashes upon the first shot. have had this very thing happen to me more than once over the years, but it's always interesting to see what kind of wonkiness causes one of Bethesda's legendary games to crash...

Looking at them funny will make them crash TBH...

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Goldeneye 64

 

[moon200218]

borderlands 2 on my gaming laptop. Requirements are met easily, but the game just will not launch. It shows up on task manager but does not launch into game any further. Mind you borderlands 3 worked on the same laptop just fine!

So i have to play borderlands 2 on my mac hahahahaaaaaa

 

[ArchienineArchienine's icon]

Goldeneye 64

On emulator?

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

View attachment 173321

Fallout New Vegas

"So, you wanted to play your game and have the best possible experience with it, didn't you, you dumb bastard? Here's a BS error code instead" XD

 

[Sanomoe]

Trying to run Bravely Default II on my onboard AMD GPU (Ryzen 5) makes the textures run in the lowest quality possible, like if they were naked. If I'm not mistaken, this doesn't happen on a NVidia GPU.

 

[bobsaget30]

Every computer ever:

inb4 schizo but i think its nvidia
i wont buy their rtx gpus cuz theyre a scam so i do have to wonder why my hardware is fine but everything lags the 1070 pc will only boot linux lol like as in windows wont boot from usb cd hdd the shop i took it to said it was fine so i dont know. just makes me wonder honestly i got an aunt who is ex red hat and she told me they 100% will slow or shut down if you dont purchase a new gpu from them
meh. lol i miss pc gaming gotta save up for steam machine/deck cant take the ai/win 10 nightmare anymore

Post automatically merged: Apr 11, 2026

Trying to run Bravely Default II on my onboard AMD GPU (Ryzen 5) makes the textures run in the lowest quality possible, like if they were naked. If I'm not mistaken, this doesn't happen on a NVidia GPU.

Pretty much, choose your Bethesda game....

I actually like them more when they crash. Now, I know that's weird, but you know good and well, Bethesda games don't need a reason to crash or a mod. They like to crash straight out of the box, so to speak.

It's always funny to run, say, Fallout: New Vegas, get 20 minutes into it, use VATS, and then it crashes upon the first shot. have had this very thing happen to me more than once over the years, but it's always interesting to see what kind of wonkiness causes one of Bethesda's legendary games to crash...

Looking at them funny will make them crash TBH...
View attachment 173366

fallout 4 runs pretty well with few mods
new vegas/oblivion/skyrim need stability mods
i noticed if i extracted all of the files from the bsa archives and pasted into the game folders it really helped with the stuttering.
that game drives me nuts tho it always randomly drops to 30 fps in some stupid area.