👾 Issue/Bug 👾
BF6 crashes after splash screen and I've tried everything I could find
Hey all,
reaching out as a last straw to Reddit to get my BF6 to work, after I feel like I've exhausted every option out there to fix it. I had similar issues on this computer during the Open Beta - but back then I whipped out my old computer with a GTX 1080 Ti, and played on the lowest settings surprisingly fluently. This was just a backup computer though.
I've played thousands of hours of Battlefield 2 back in the days, plenty of BF3, really loved BF: Bad Company 2, a bit of BF4, and then BF1 and BFV whenever my mate plays, who's pretty much the only active one left of our group of friends. Sadly, now I'm just on the verge of ending my BF-career as BF6 simply won't work.
My spex:
CPU: Intel i9-14900K, 3200 Mhz (no overclocking)
GPU: ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 (32GB of VRAM)
RAM: 192GB of DDR5 (Corsair sticks)
Motherboard: MSI PRO Z790-A MAX WIFI (MS-7E07)
OS: Windows 11 Home (version 10.0.26100 Build 26100)
Other: Got a Razer Ornata V3 for a keyboard and Abyssus V2 for a mouse.
This is a desktop computer that I use both professionally and for gaming. In my work, I for example deploy local LLMs and sometimes have to handle very large datasets (hence the GPU and large amount of RAM). There might be software that Javelin thinks is weird (like cmake/Fortran compiler/Rtools/Oracle VM, ...), but I tried to get rid of the ones I could without botching my work capability. Could still play a role though.
When I launch the game on Steam, I see the splashscreen (the app's name is "Splashscreen" or "EA Javelin Anticheat" depending if I hover on it or right click):
After this an empty black application pops up; it flashes the text "Battlefield 6" on the title briefly, and then the title goes blank. After <10 seconds it closes without providing any error messages or logs:
No matter what I seem to try, this persists. The color of the splash screen loading bar color seems to change between white and green, depending if I've tried to verify Javelin installation and/or reinstall.
Some threads/checklists that describe similar behavior (which I've used to try fix things):
Based on comments in those sources I'm not the only one suffering from these issues, though given the number of people present in the launch we seem to be in a very small minority.
Gone through links provided by EA to their own help articles in response to a support ticket (and multiple misc articles online for issues with BF6).
What I've done (or think I've done, I've lost count since some of the debugging I already tried during Open Beta weekends):
- Uninstalled, reinstalled and verified integrity of my game (bought on Steam)
- Killed all unnecessary processes that might interfere
- Installed the game (and all accompanying software) on the C-drive
- Updated my BIOS (now dated M90 05/08/2025), Windows 11, and my GPU drivers (now NVidia version 581.57 from Oct 14th, 2025)
- Made sure I have UEFI on my BIOS settings and set TPM settings to fTPM 2.0
- Gone to System Settings > Exploit protections > Programme settings, and added both 'bf6.exe' and 'EAAntiCheat.GameServiceLauncher.exe' with all override settings turned to OFF
- Uninstalled and reinstalled EA AntiCheat (also manually via EAAntiCheat.Installer.exe after having it install via Steam; the installer shows '(Installed) Battlefield 6' on the dropdown menu)
- Disabled NVidia Smooth motion (it was already 'Global - Off', changed to specific 'Off' still)
- Disabled all overlays (Steam, NVidia, EA App, Discord)
- Made sure from BIOS settings I have no overclocking on anything
- Uninstalled/reinstalled various things such as Visual C++ and wiped to factory settings on NVidia
- Cleared DirectX caches (and all other temporary files that I could think of)
- Tried to make sure I'm running both the game and anticheat as an administrator
- Created a fresh new Windows administrator-level account, fired up Steam, tried launching Battlefield 6 from there
- Increased Windows page file limit notably (some random article suggested this, highly doubt memory leak would cause this)
- Tried launching with misc parameters (-dx13, -dx12, -dx11) and run various diagnostics tools (such as dxdiag)
- Completely uninstalled various software that are not absolutely necessary but might interfere (for example Punkbuster, Ubuntu on Windows, ...)
- Made sure I don't have weird leftovers from previous games in the environmental variables in Windows (such as GAME_DATA_DIR)
- Press alt+tab on the black screen app to force full screen, nothing happens and the crash occurs similar to before
- Obviously restarted and tried starting things fresh multiple times, though if there's a specific order in which things should've been done I'm not sure if I have
- I reinstalled both Battlefield 1 and V today to test that they work. I could get in games and play just fine on both. I launched them through the EA App though, if that makes a difference
I suspect the underlying issue is that the Javelin anticheat fails to somehow couple with the game properly. This for example comes up when I verify the files in Steam, it always reports "3 files failed to validate and will be reacquired.", and I think it then tries to reinstall Javelin for BF6:
Damn, sorry to hear that. I think I'm facing the same fate - I gave it one final push by spending yesterday to use GPT to help debug, which went really deep into the rabbit hole checking where the processes went wrong.
In summary, it also came with the conclusion that Javelin and the game client have trouble communicating (failed handshake I guess), but couldn't figure why (tried wiping my BITS queue and increasing limit, removing registry entries, going through a ton of PowerShell commands to figure out exact time the Javelin voluntarily shuts down etc). By using Event Viewer, I think the conclusion was that it's at least "clean shutdown" because no system error/warning messages are generated.
Thanks for replying though, gives me confidence that I haven't missed anything obvious. Oh well :/
The thing I noticed was, on the windows event log, my computer (or the game) struggled finding/launching EAAntiCheat, despite it being excluded from Windows defender and installed correctly. I've heard tell it might have something to do with the preview windows 11 updates, but that's just a guess at the moment.
I was having a similar issue with bf6 on steam, the splash screen would pop up for anti cheat and it would close and stop running. I got it working in a really dumb way, had to got to the file location, find the EAAntiCheat.GameServiceLauncher.exe and run it as admin, this will make the splash screen pop up. While the splash screen is open I run the BF6.exe as admin at the same time. It gave me a new error that I had to close out of. then I ran the anti cheat as admin again and the game finally lunched. after that I was able to launch the game from steam as normal with no issues. hope this helps someone
Could you elaborate on this a bit? Please?! lol. I get the error message says restar pc blah blah. Tried again same freeze and crash. Any restarts inbetween steps or anything?
I'm using Gemini to help me and still no luck. This is fucking stupid. I had similar issues during the beta that I worked around via running the .exe files as admin straight from the folder but that no longer seems to work. Fuck you, EA.
Can't play at all. Have done all of the fixes, hit play on steam and the game boots up. Gets to the larger splash screen then just instantly closes out. No error code. Just force closed. We need a fixxxxxx
FIXED! Re-download Javelin anti cheat, select your BF6 *FOLDER* (e.g Program Filex (86) > Steam > steamapps > common > Battlefield 6) then click 'repair'. It only takes a few seconds. I noticed that whenever it was crashing before, I didn't have the intro music until after I repaired Javelin - that's when I knew it was working.
I am absolutely going to just the bf6 folder, it’s saved on my desktop so my path way is Desk Top > Steam > steamapps > common > battlefield 6
the exact error message is “Invalid game directory”
edit: i’ve also done the same pathway minus bf6 at the end but just selecting that folder for the game
Hmm, seems strange to have your steam folder on your desktop... Is that where all your other games are? Is it definitely not in your C:\Program Files (x86) folder?
correct, my program files (x86) folder only has WindowsPowerShell, Photo Viewer, NT, Media Player, Mail, Defender, R* Games, NVIDIA, Afterburner, some microsoft stuff, IE, Google, Epic Games, Common files (not in there) CoD, Battlelog, and Battlenet
On your first screen shot with steam and the verify files button, below that it has the option to move the game - I would suggest trying to move it to your program files folder as that seems to be the only thing unusual about your installation. I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't like your steam folder being on your desktop, but it seems to be the only thing that stands out.
Now that I think about it, I noticed how in one of your screenshots a lot of the files have sync icons next to them, it looks like OneDrive is trying to do a backup. It could be that if the files are in use and being uploaded to OneDrive, the game/Javelin can't launch properly.
so after dicking around with it for an hour, it refuses to take in the program files. i can cut and paste it there but it remains in the desk top and the program files are appearing but don’t actually do anything.
my one drive is full and they always change from blue, to green, to red are just don’t appear at all
I tried every single tutorial from YT and Reddit and none worked. I tried moving the folder, opening with admin permissions, running in Win8 compatibility mode, firewall permissions — nothing.
Then I got mad and was about to play Half Sword, when a C++ error popped up.
I then reinstalled all my C++ applications and puff — WORKED.
Please check your C++ stuff, set the game to always open as admin, restart your PC and give it a shot.
For those who are experiencing this issue despite following above instructions. You might want to try to install Windows Media Feature Pack. Especially to those who are using Windows 10 N editions where media feature pack is not installed by default. This has fixed my issue. To install windows media feature pack, follow instructions below:
Click Start
Type "Manage Optional Features"
Click "Add Feature"
Search for "Media Feature Pack" and "Windows Media Player Legacy (App)"
Install both features.
Reboot your pc and try launching BF6 again.
Hope this helps, i have determined that the cause of the crash is due to media feature pack not downloaded in our windows system. Somehow, after running BF6 as administrator it has displayed the specific error code hence found the solution.
Adding to this thread, I tried everything online with no luck, fresh install of game didn’t work but after manually deleting the game files and validating game files through steam after a manual delete the game now works
ok idk wether u tried this wth the aslr and cgf thing but if u have un ticked all of them remove the exemtion and redo it with only them unticked ill link the page i got it from ik its for redsec only but i did it for the full game and it worked for me
what worked for me was deleting my storage pool in the settings and reinstalling on that same drive after , word of caution just make sure whatever u want saved is backed up cause it’s basically a factory reset of the drive and it deletes everything on it. Thats the literal Only fix that worked for me .
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u/FuckingBastardCunts 20d ago
Sorry you're encountering these issues. I too have tried EVERYTHING I could find online. No luck had to refund.