Like many curious players, I jumped into a bit of xDefiant over the weekend. Ubisoft’s new free-to-play COD-like is drawing a fairly positive response from early adopters, who like its fast-paced take on the multiplayer milsim (and its comparatively minuscule install size).
However, I ran into a problem pretty quickly — I couldn’t get the game to start. I’d installed xDefiant on my desktop PC and jumped through all the hoops. I’d downloaded the Ubisoft Connect app — under protest, but it looks like they’ve rebuilt it to resemble the Battle.net app? A step up IMO. The game was installed, and the files were verified. I have more than enough Computer to run it. And yet, I couldn’t get it to boot properly.
Whenever I’d try to launch xDefiant, it would take its time starting the app. My monitor would go black, and stay that way. The sound of the first-time startup accessibility text-to-speech would begin to read, and then the graphics driver and the game would crash together. My monitor would flash as the signal died. Windows 10 would get the lights back on, and I’d be dumped back to the desktop.
I spent a day and a half looking for a solve. The usual PC gaming soothsayers and witch doctors had their theories, some more technical than others. I spent several hours trawling through them, taken on a tour of the deepest, darkest recesses of the Windows OS. None of them appeared to work.
Ubisoft dropped a 1GB patch on Saturday morning that I hoped might address whatever the issue was. It didn’t.
Despite my growing frustration, I realised I was getting ahead of myself. The most complex possible solution rarely leads to a genuine fix. Instead, you should always return to fundamentals. I started down the list of old reliable solutions: reinstall, re-verify the install integrity, and run with admin permissions. No go.
Righto, we move onto In-Game Overlays, the regular bane of the new release AAA PC title. Nvidia GeForce Experience overlay disabled. Still nothing.
Then, I disabled the Discord overlay.
xDefiant suddenly sprang to life. I was in. The game was running perfectly. No messing around in the Windows backrooms, no modified .ini files, no black magic, no dark arts.
All I’d had to do this whole time was turn the damned Discord overlay off.
So, there you go. If you’ve been running into this same issue, and I’ve seen a few people who have, that’s how I fixed my problem xDefiant install. May my weekend of troubleshooting help you, too.
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