Steam : Failed To Start Game, app already running

Hello,

When i tried to switch from Fullscreen to Windowed Fullscreen, the game became stuck at a little "Please wait..." popup. After waiting a good few mins, i tried to CTRL+SHFT+ESC to bring up the task manager, without success. Alt+Tab neither did anything, nor did Win+Tab. So i ended up forcing the shutdown of my computer.

When it returned to the desktop and i tried to run PoE again, steam told me this message :

"Failed to start Game (app already running)"

I tried to verify the game integrity on steam which was surprisingly fast and did nothing of note.

Little help here?

Thanks for your reply!

Attempting to log out from steam (that is, from the steam client, clicking on 'Steam -- Change User... -- Log out') was unsuccessful. When i try that, it attempt to shut down PoE, fail, and tell me "Please close Path of Exile before exiting Steam".

Clicking on 'Steam -- Exit' like you said yield the same result.

I also tried to shutdown my computer, wait 15-20 mins then boot it up again, to no avail.

Also killed the steam process (Steam Client Bootstrapper) and restarted it, neither helped.

EDIT : Trying to 'Go offline' didn't work (same message). Cancelling the auto-login on steam-start and reentering my ID didn't work.

Hello,

I have tried to run PathOfExileSteam.exe as an admin, to no avail. A steam popup showed up, "preparing to run Path of Exile...", then the dreaded message "Failed to start game (app already running)" appeared.

EDIT : I cannot delete local content, since the game is supposedly running.

EDIT #2 : HAH! I did it! When logging in, i selected 'Go offline' instead, then the game was freed and running nicely.

Thank you for your support. :)

Hello again,

Unfortunately, i talked too quick. As soon as i switch to Online Mode on steam (after properly exiting the game), PoE show up as running again.

HOWEVER, i ended up :

(spoilered because you should look at the guide below instead)


EDIT : Just to be clear for future reference, since i tried to redo the whole 'set to Windowed Fullscreen' and it did the same thing :

1. Click on 'steam -- Go Offline'. It will fail because the game is supposedly running. It's ok.
2. Restart computer.
3. Go in steamapps/common and CUT-PASTE the PoE folder away somewhere safe. Keep it.
4. In steam, right-click on PoE and select 'delete local content'.
5. Once done, put the folder back where it was.
6. Go Online.
7. Find PoE in the store. It will tell you that it is already in your library. That's okay, click play anyway.
8. It will find existing files, avoiding downloads. After a little while, it will complete.
9. You can play!

Let it be some guidance for anyone else hitting the same problem as i had.

Bump... I'm having the same exact issue.

There is no PathOfExile.exe or PathOfExileSteam.exe in the list of running processes and yet Steam is sure that the game is running.

I'll try to troubleshoot and report back later.

-EDIT: Deleting the \appcache\ folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\ seemed to have solved this but I fear I may have to delete the folder every time I shut down PoE...

Actually...



Check the spoiler out, yea.