WARDOGS error codes and crash fixes

Refuses to start, with a long numeric code

Usually a build mismatch that verifying game files fixes. Since the launch hotfix it is also hitting players on the current build with files already validated — that is the login backend refusing you, and verifying again does nothing. Since 11 September that refusal often follows a mid-match kick, and relaunching is what eventually gets people back in. "No license found" was an incorrect ban on Bulkhead's side, lifted without anyone filing an appeal.

Closes instantly at startup, with no error

Almost always an overlay, an anti-cheat conflict or a stale shader cache rather than your hardware.

Unable to launch, error code WD-L0xx

WD-L020 is fixed. Update 0.1.2, deployed on 30 September, patches the clash with Windows 11 update KB5124010 that caused it, so update WARDOGS through Steam and launch again; you no longer need to uninstall the Windows update. WD-L018 is new with that patch: if you run Kaspersky, exclude the game from it and verify files. WD-L004, WD-L006, WD-L007, WD-L010 and WD-L014 still have no published cause — repairing the anti-cheat from the game folder is what has worked most often for those.

Anti-cheat will not install or log in

Relaunch from Steam rather than from inside the game, and check nothing else on the machine or the network is blocking EAC.

Launcher says the anti-cheat refused the game

Anti-cheat files left behind by a previous install are still locked by Windows. Uninstalling, rebooting and then reinstalling is what clears them — in that order.

Elytra Anti-Cheat will not start or install

Windows has not finished validating the certificate chain on Elytra-Setup.exe. Opening the signature by hand and waiting for the chain to resolve once is what clears it.

A Windows error the moment you press play

The anti-cheat failed to initialise. Rebuilding the EAC install and setting its services to Automatic fixes it.

Won't launch: Invalid Game Executable Path

A corrupted or incomplete install is the most consistently reported cause. Verifying game files through Steam, then a full reboot rather than just relaunching Steam, is the fix reported to work most often.

CreateProcess: requires elevation

Something is forcing the game to start elevated, and the launcher cannot start a process at a higher privilege than its own. Turning Run as administrator off is the fix, not turning it on.

Crashes a minute or two into every match

Turn picture-in-picture scopes off in Settings then Graphics. Team17 support gives this step for mid-match crashes and for crashes when aiming through an optic. It is a rendering fault rather than a stability problem with your machine, and it has not been shown to clear every case.

A crash naming platformcore.dll

Turn Memory Integrity off under Core isolation, and clear two leftover registry entries if they are present.

Anti-cheat blocks you after a Windows update

Easy Anti-Cheat flags a driver your RGB or motherboard software installed. Disable the driver and the game runs.

Blue screen or full system crash

New since Update 0.1.2 on 30 September: players report the PC rebooting or blue-screening the moment they press a key or a side mouse button, in the menu or in a match. There is no official word or fix yet. Before that, an update aimed at this went out on 3 September and it has not worked for everyone. Get on it first, and if you are still crashing after it, the stop code tells you which of three different faults you actually have.

Whole PC reboots on launch, no BSOD

No fix is confirmed yet. Disabling Hyper-V/VBS stopped it for some players and not others, and Bulkhead has not replied in the thread this page is sourced from.

Names a .sys driver, or blue-screens on one

The anti-cheat will not run alongside a third-party kernel driver, and the one it names is almost always RGB, motherboard or hardware-monitoring software rather than anything you installed on purpose.

A blue screen takes the whole PC down

Stop playing until this is resolved. Kernel-level crashes can corrupt Windows, and this one traces to a specific Windows update.

A crash naming kernelbase.dll

Verify game files and reboot. If it comes back, turn off upscaling and hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling.

Cannot get past the audio device screen

The confirmation control is there but rendered off-screen by a UI scale and language bug. Arrow keys reach it, and switching the game to English stops it happening again.

No sound at all, whatever you change

Your Windows output device is set to a format the game cannot handle. Drop it to 24-bit, 44.1 kHz.

Key binds will not set or stick

Edit the key config file directly. It lives with your other settings under %LocalAppData%\Wardogs, and the game has to be closed while you do it.

Mortars and emplaced guns will not reload

Changing the reload key leaves the separate reload binding for built and vehicle weapons empty, and resetting keybinds in the menu does not refill it. Close the game and put a key into the Vehicle.WeaponExtension.Reload line of GameUserSettings.ini, or delete the config folder and do not rebind reload. Team17 is investigating; Update 0.1.2 did not fix it.

Aim feels heavy, as if the mouse is decelerating

It is V-Sync. Turn it off in the video settings and the aim comes back immediately — nothing in the mouse settings, in Windows or on the mouse itself is causing it.

Controller stops responding, or feels far more sensitive than your settings

A hotfix enabled Steam Input for controllers without most players noticing, and it now conflicts with WARDOGS' own controller handling. Turning Steam Input off for WARDOGS in Steam has cleared both the dead-input and the over-sensitive variant for everyone who has reported back.

Mouse wheel will not zoom scopes

Scope zoom has no entry in the controls menu, so binding anything else to the mouse wheel (weapon switching, zeroing) overwrites it, and resetting keybinds in game does not restore it. Close the game and delete the two ScopeZoom entries from GameUserSettings.ini, or delete the whole file. Team17 has acknowledged the bug; Update 0.1.2 did not fix it.

Dropped back to the main screen on joining

A fault at Bulkhead's end rather than yours. On 12 September Bulkhead found one server that had been sending players back to the main menu on join since launch and took it down, so if it happened on one server, it is over. If it happens on every server, restart once to make sure you have Launch Stability Hotfix #1.

Account has no permission to log in

The servers refused the login rather than failed it: you are outside a test window, or your invite wave has not landed yet. No local fix exists and verifying files will not help.

Stops at load with a code and no explanation

The game could not get an answer from the online services at load. It clustered on the busiest beta and launch days, and now also recurs in a sharp, roughly hour-long spike most Tuesday evenings around 6pm ET — timing that lines up with Steam's own maintenance window rather than anything WARDOGS-specific. Nothing about it points at your install.

Failed to initialize player session

The online services did not answer. It is a server-side fault, not your install: the login backend is saturated and the only thing that works is trying again. If you got as far as a server list and the join failed there, you are on the wrong code — the join timed out page has it.

Failed to authenticate with online services

The login service refused your session, which nothing on your machine will change. If the screen also carries 1147405308, that code has its own page: on an out-of-date install it is a version mismatch that verifying fixes, and since launch it is more often the same refusal with a number attached.

Cannot join any server while everyone is joining

Both times this code appeared, every server was full at that moment. It is a capacity failure at join time rather than a problem with your install, and it cleared when Bulkhead scaled the servers up.

Cleared the queue, then cannot join any server

This lands after the queue, at the join step, and it was theirs. A client hotfix naming this exact symptom went out at 20:20 UTC on 10 September — restart the game, take the update, and expect to requeue.

Dropped out of a match partway through

A server-side fault with no working player-side fix. Launch Stability Hotfix #1 lists this exact symptom as addressed and the reports carried on after it, so the honest answer today is that Bulkhead has named it and not finished it.

Cannot join a server, and not sure which fault it is

Five faults answer to this sentence and they have five different answers. What separates them is how far you got: the browser, the click, the loading screen, or the match itself.

Warning icons on the HUD

They are network warnings, not errors: the game is telling you it has detected a connection problem, and each icon names which kind. Only the server-rack icon says where the fault is — on the server, so nothing on your PC will clear it. For the other five, the icon tells you what went wrong but not whose end it happened on.

Account banned, error 1147405307

This is a ban on your account, not a fault on your PC, so verifying files, reinstalling or changing settings will not lift it. A timed ban ends on its own. If you think it is a mistake, the official route is to DM the WARDOGS Support bot on the WARDOGS Discord, which walks you through an appeal.

Crash: out of video memory

Not simply a card that is too small: players report it on 16 GB and 24 GB cards as well as 8 GB ones, often only after hours of play, which looks more like memory building up than a hard limit. There is no confirmed fix. Lowering texture settings and restarting the game between long sessions are the sensible things to try, and Bulkhead has not mentioned video memory in any patch note.

Warns your AMD driver is outdated

A false positive in the game rather than a problem with your driver. If Adrenalin says you are current, you are current, and there is nothing to do.

The server browser is empty

During the betas an empty browser was the region filter: select exactly one. On launch night, after the hotfix, it was the servers being brought back in batches. From Patch 0.11 on 14 September the browser has two tabs, Community and Official, and only Community has filters to get wrong.

Stuck in a queue that never moves

Server-side, and on launch day it sits in front of the main menu rather than in front of a server — so there is nothing to switch to. Bulkhead shipped a hotfix naming extended queue times at 20:20 UTC on 10 September.

Local voice chat drops out

Usually an outage at the third-party voice provider rather than your microphone. Toggling mute twice from the scoreboard restores it.

Kicked on Linux after a few minutes

There is no fix. Bulkhead confirmed on 4 September 2026 that Linux is not supported and that Proton support will not be ready for launch.

Linux: anti-cheat will not install, or kicks for no heartbeat

There is nothing to fix on your machine. The anti-cheat that shipped with Beta 02 has no Linux module, and Bulkhead said on 4 September that it cannot commit to Linux support for launch.

Cash gone after a crash or disconnect

Two different things. Leaving or losing a match part-way, crash or disconnect included, forfeits the cash earned in that match, and the kit you died with is gone, by design. But cash you had before the match disappearing, or a balance dropping when you log out and back in, is a bug. Team17 says it is investigating those reports; there is no restore process and no fix yet.

Blue screen or full restart while the game is launching

A conflict between the anti-cheat and Windows virtualisation. Team17 support tells players to turn off Hyper-V, Windows Sandbox, WSL2 and the Virtual Machine Platform, and several players report that this fixed it. Several others turned all of it off and still crashed, so treat it as the first step rather than the answer.

Crash Report Handler shows "fetched optional streams"

That line is the crash reporter reporting its own progress while it writes the dump file, not a diagnosis. It appears after any crash, so the useful question is when the crash happened: while the game was starting, during a match, or with the whole machine going down.

Infrared rangefinder shows players through walls

A rendering bug in the infrared rangefinder that highlights players and buildables through walls and terrain. Reports cluster on older Nvidia GTX cards (1050, 1070, 1080 Ti) on low settings, and some mention XeSS or anti-aliasing off. Team17 passed it to the developers and Update 0.1.2 did not fix it. On 2 October Bulkhead disabled IR rangefinders in the vendor until Season 02 for being too overpowered. Using it on purpose counts as exploiting a bug, which Bulkhead's rules say can get you banned.