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Elytra Anti-Cheat

WARDOGS: Elytra Anti-Cheat will not start or install

Published Updated Data as of Season 2 · 15 Oct 2026

This one is on your machine

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.

What you see

The launcher stops before the game opens and names Elytra rather than Easy Anti-Cheat — either failing to install the anti-cheat, or failing to start it on a machine where it is already installed. The moderator team's own name for it is an RPC service error.

Also reported as: Elytra-Setup.exe · elytra anti-cheat · elytra launcher · elytra failed to start · elytra will not install · RPC service error · session prime failed · session prime failed: rpc error · 0x800707D1 · the specified driver is invalid · Elytra.Service · 0x00000424 · 0x80070660 · elytra anti-cheat framework setup failed

Fixes, in the order worth trying

Work top to bottom and stop when the game launches. Each step is labelled with how much evidence sits behind it, so you can skip the guesses if the first ones work.

  1. 01 Open the Elytra folder inside your game install

    Reported

    Steam, Library, right-click WARDOGS, Properties, Installed Files, Browse. The anti-cheat lives in an Elytra subfolder next to the game, in the same way Easy Anti-Cheat used to.

  2. 02 Right-click Elytra-Setup.exe, then Properties, then Digital Signatures

    Reported

    Select the signature in the list and click Details, then View Certificate, then open the Certification Path tab.

  3. 03 Wait on the Certification Path tab until it reads "This certificate is OK."

    Reported

    This is the step that does the work, and it is the one people skip. Windows fetches and caches the rest of the chain while that dialog is open. Closing it early leaves the chain unresolved and the anti-cheat still refuses to start.

  4. 04 Close every dialog, then launch the game again

    Reported

    From Steam, not from a shortcut and not from inside the game. Nothing needs reinstalling.

  5. 05 If the machine is behind a filtered connection, test on a phone hotspot

    Unconfirmed

    Validating a certificate chain is a network operation. A connection that blocks it produces exactly this failure, and a hotspot is the fastest way to rule it in or out.

Did this fix it for you?

Notes from other players who hit this code. Say what worked, what did not, and which region you are in — a fix that only works in one place is worth knowing about. Best-rated first, and there is no time limit: an answer from the first beta is still an answer.

No comments yet. Be the first to say whether this worked.

If your launcher says Elytra, this is your page. If it says Easy Anti-Cheat, the anti-cheat login page is the one you want — the two are different software with different folders and different fixes, and the advice does not carry across.

Which anti-cheat you are actually running

WARDOGS shipped its earlier builds on Easy Anti-Cheat, and most of the troubleshooting written about this game still assumes that. The moderator team in the official Discord posted a fix thread on 4 September titled for Elytra Anti-Cheat, describing a folder called Elytra sitting inside the game install and an installer called Elytra-Setup.exe.

Bulkhead have not announced a change, and the studio's 4 September statement on Linux does not name an anti-cheat either (what is and is not known →). What we can say is that if the file you are looking at is Elytra-Setup.exe, none of the EAC advice applies to it, and the folder the EAC pages tell you to delete is not the folder your problem is in.

Why a certificate is the fix

An anti-cheat driver will not load unless Windows trusts the signature on it. Windows does not fetch the whole certificate chain up front — it fetches what it needs, when it needs it, and it caches the result. On a machine where that fetch has failed or is still pending, the signature is valid and Windows cannot yet prove it, so the anti-cheat is refused and the launcher stops.

Opening the Certification Path tab forces the fetch and holds the dialog open long enough for it to finish. When the box reads This certificate is OK. the chain is cached, and the next launch has nothing left to fail on.

That is also why the step people skip is the one that matters. Clicking through the dialogs quickly does nothing at all.

How firm this is

Graded reported, not confirmed. It comes from a volunteer moderator rather than from Bulkhead, and the thread is tagged POTENTIAL FIX by the board's own labelling. It has no replies and seventeen reactions, in two kinds: nine of a gesture meaning no, and eight thumbs down. On a board where the threads that resolved something collect thumbs up, that is not a fix anybody is reporting success with.

It is also the smallest of the current faults. In the moderator team's own poll of 588 players still crashing after the September patch, this one — listed there as an RPC service error — took 25 votes, four per cent.

It is also free, reversible and takes about a minute, which is a good trade against a fix graded this softly. What we would not do on the strength of it is reinstall Windows, turn off Secure Boot, or any of the heavier advice that tends to attach itself to anti-cheat threads.

The other Elytra messages from the September build

Two Steam threads from 2 September carry wordings that are not the install failure above, and neither has a fix that held.

"Elytra Launcher Service start failed: OpenService 'Elytra.Service': (0x00000424)", sometimes with "Elytra Anti-Cheat Framework Setup Failed" (0x80070660) behind it. The player who opened the thread had already run the installer by hand, run as administrator, updated video drivers, restarted, and deleted the Elytra folder before verifying. One reply reports a plain restart clearing it; another suggests switching off Smart App Control, which exists only on Windows 11 and did not apply to the original poster on Windows 10. Both are single reports. Graded unconfirmed.

"Session prime failed: RPC error" with "The specified driver is invalid. (0x800707D1)" on the same screen, on a machine with current NVIDIA drivers. The Discord moderators' name for the whole family is an RPC service error, which is how it reaches this page; no thread records what cleared it. Graded unconfirmed. If your screen carries that pair of lines, the certificate steps above are still the cheapest thing to try first, because they cost a minute and undo nothing.

Source

WARDOGS Discord, #beta-fixes, 4 September 2026 ↗

If that did not do it