[Win] Game doesn't load - white screen

Hello Charlie, thanks for the reply.
As I said, I have already done all these. And since I bought it through Steam I can’t install it in Safe mode. I have shut down my AV completely, not only added the exceptions (I have before trying that added the exceptions, of course).
The white screen does not respond to any interaction except ALT-F4 and ALT-TAB, btw. SLI is always off, Windows Upates are always installed ASAP, Compability settings does not make a difference… etc.

The only thing I have not tried is to completely uninstall my anti-virus.

Hey stefan, you can send me a screenshot of your running processes from task manager to support@greenheartgames.com and i can check for any suspects!

Mailing it now.
Sorry for the long list, itunes etc clutters up the list…

BR Stefan

So… tried everything else today.
Uninstalled comodo completely.
Disabled all network connections.

Still white screen, which apprently mean “something is blocking” the game.
The only thing left is the proxy on my ISP side. That one I cannot do anything about, for obvious reasons.

It is starting to seem like incompetent coding to me, since no other program has a problem, even when Comodo was extremely tight configured. Now, without ANYTHING that can block the program…

The only thing I can think of is that Game Dev doesn’t play well with Google Chrome, and i am not getting rid of Chrome just to try that idea. How many of those who have problems use Chrome? How many who do not have the problem use Chrome?

Maybe i have one solution i have an HP Pavilion Laptop with an Intel HD Graphic 4000 and an ATI Raedon HD 8670M. After i disabled the Intel HD and running only with the ATI card in can start the game and the screen shows the normal startup screen. Also i have mayor graphic failures in the game but i can live with that becaus i can PLAY :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Edit: @Stefan i´m not using chrom

I only have one graphic card. However I have 2 different sound drivers… maybe…?

Edit: Nope!!

I had this problem but I fixed it. All you need to do is disconnect your PC/laptop from the internet, then when the game loads up you can reconnect to the internet. Hope this helps :smile:

Unfortunately that was the first thing I tried…

I still think it has something to do with Chrome.

Hey Guys,

Just as an FYI Google Chrome the web browser has no interactions with the Chromium software Game Dev Tycoon uses. :smile:


We are looking for some testers for an “Anti-White-Screen” build.

To qualify you must meet the following criteria;

  • Have the White Screen Issue.
  • Be a Steam User.
  • Be a Windows OS User.
  • Have the time and inclination to spend a little time testing.

If you meet this criteria please email me with the email header WS TEST BUILD REQUEST
at support@greenheartgames.com

Many thanks Charlie, I’ll make sure to email that now.

I had this game for a couple of weeks now. Played it a bunch. Loved it. Then all of a sudden today I started getting this white screen error at load. It was already added as an exception in Kaspersky AV and in my Windows firewall. I don’t believe I added or removed any programs. I have no idea why this error started happening. Anyway, what worked for me was the fix suggested here: launch the game in Windows Vista compatibility mode. (I’m running Windows 7.)

I just mention this for the sake of posterity, in case it would help anyone.

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I had the white screen up until the last patch. Nothing helped. Then it worked until the latest batch of Windows updates… and now I have not heard from Support for a week after reporting it.

The White screen is back, and the ONLY difference from the week it worked was the standard Windows 8 updates. Nothing else changed on the system. It has now been non-working for a week.

Did you try editing the launch file’s properties by running it in Windows Vista compatibility mode?

Oh dear. hope Charlie and Patrick can fix this. And you guys can play on windows.

My daughter just purchased this game through Steam. I’m trying to help her resolve the white screen problem and I have tried the various workarounds suggested here, none of which help.

What does work is running the game from the admin account on that PC, which is unacceptable - I don’t let the kids use that and no other game they have requires admin privs to run.

This is a Windows 7 PC.

When the game is started you see the white screen and if you bring up the task manager (but don’t do anything else) you can hear the game sound. If you move the mouse over the screen you can see the pointer change and if you click on anything with a link you can hear things happening - in other words the game is running and operable but you can’t see anything.

This isn’t a firewall issue or an anti virus issue or display drivers as everything works in the admin account.

If you don’t have a fix, can I get a refund? I’m not encouraged that the reports of the white screen have been around since May and the problem still isn’t fixed

Just to be clear:

Do you have a AV program running? If yes, did you try to exclude GDT?
Did you make sure that you have the latest display drivers installed?
Can you also check that there is enough space on the C drive?

I know you say it works under Admin but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be caused by outdated display drivers or AV software.

We have done a lot of updates since May to address this and the problem is far less common now but since the issue is caused by AV software (at least in the vast majority of cases) it is very difficult to eradicate the issue completely.

I’m sorry for the trouble. Hopefully we can resolve this.

Regarding refunds: Unfortunately Steam has a no-refund policy. We simply do not have the power to grant refunds on Steam. If the issue does persists you may want to open a support ticket with them.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

There is an anti virus program running - Defender - but I shut that off and tried running the game (in my daughter’s non-priv account) and I still got the white screen.

The display drivers are the most recent (I also had the Steam interface check and it say’s they’re the most recent too)

There is 64 GB of disk space on the C drive. I also turned off parental controls for her account to see if that made any difference; logged out and in again and the game still failed to display anything (it does run and you can hear the music but only have a white screen). BTW I was wrong about the Task manager coming up as a way to get the background music; you just need to wait a bit.

So what else is there that might be different between the two accounts - if not the privileges - that would cause this problem? I can change ownership or permissions on files if you think that’ll help. I’m game to try anything other than letting my daughter play in an admin account.

Have you tried any of the compatibility modes on the .exe file?
Can you check in the ‘Event Viewer’ under ‘Application Errors’ if there is any error logged from GameDevTycoon? maybe there is a different issue that causes this.

As a final step, can you try running the game when you don’t have a internet connection at all? Just unplug/disable the network adapter and start the game directly via the GameDevTycoon.exe file. Obviously this isn’t a solution but it would help identify the cause.

Thanks for the suggestions.

If I run the game by double clicking on the .exe from Windows explorer (i.e. don’t launch it from Steam) the game runs just fine. I shut it down and went back to launch Steam and try again to run it from there (to make sure it still was white screen) and got the white screen.

I checked the Event Viewer and didn’t see anything for GameDevTycoon or anything related to display drivers (I looked around and most of the entries were warnings or information).

I didn’t try no internet today - I had tried it before I made the first post as it was one of the suggestions made in earlier reports and I still got the white screen.

For the moment, my daughter is happy that she can play, but obviously this mode of play means that there will be problems if she takes updates via Steam in the future (because it will wipe out local data that hasn’t been stored on the Steam servers).

My son plays many Steam games (on a different computer and he hasn’t played GameDevTycoon) and I think this is the first time on either computer that we’ve seen a problem of a game operating differently when launched from Steam. If there is anything else I can check to give you more information, please let me know

EDITED to reply to your post below (I’m apparently limited to 3 replies and it makes no sense to start a new topic)

There is no special setup for her account - at least not on purpose. Parental controls were on, but I turned those off as part of trying to figure out what was wrong. It is certainly an odd combination of behaviors on the same machine.

very peculiar. Thanks for reporting this info. We will look into it. Can you tell me if your daughters Windows account has any special settings, or is it just a standard non-admin user account?

regarding the save games you could disable steam cloud save (right click on game in Steam and change settings under properties) - this should get around the update problem.