Game Crash at Startup 'Couldn't find signature file... Characters.pak' (Solved, I think)

[amberlyske]

Game mode: N/A
Type of issue: Crash
Server type: N/A
Region: N/A
Mods?: No
Edition: Steam

Bug Description:

Game crashes at startup. Pressing the launch button on the funcom launcher leads to an error.
Relevant crash log line: "Fatal error: [File:C:\workspace_streams\Engine\Source\Runtime\PakFile\Private\SignedArchiveReader.cpp] [Line: 27] Couldn’t find pak signature file ‘…/…/…/Engine/Content/Paks/Characters.pak’ "

Tried to launch with mods first, trying to make sure they were all updated but it was crashing immediately. Tried removing some, nothing. Cleared modlist.txt, nothing. Verified files, it re-downloaded something (I think Characters.pak), tried again, same error. Tried verifying again, all validated successfully, same error. I haven’t re-downloaded the whole game yet but being 114 gigabytes I would really rather avoid it.

Edit: Reinstalled. Didn’t work.

Hardware:
Intel i5-8400
RTX 3060Ti 8gb; driver v. 471.11
16gb DDR4-3000

Expected Behavior:

I expected the game to launch.

Installed Mods:

None. modlist.txt is clear.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Press ‘play’ on Steam
2. Press ‘launch’ on the launcher
3. Watch crash
4. Cry

[amberlyske]

Got it to work! I changed Characters.pak’s file extension to something random, I think it was .pak5. Then it complained about the other file in that directory (Bases.pak iirc) to pak8. And the game fired right up, mods and all, for some reason. I have no idea why that works and I have no confidence that it will remain stable but it’s something.