Wardogs, perhaps as a consequence of its immense popularity, has had quite the rocky launch into early access on Steam. On September 10, players were in hours-long queues attempting to get online, and the issues have only persisted since then. Now, while many are able to access the game and play, some are plagued by an error code that begins with WD-L014. This prevents the game from getting past the launcher at all.
There are a few ways to fix this, and although they’re not guaranteed to work, we’re assured by the Wardogs development team that they’re looking into it on a technical level and it should be resolved soon. As soon as we have an official update on that, we’ll update this guide.
For now, here are several methods I personally tried, and one that ultimately allowed me to get into the game successfully. Ensure you go through each of the steps even if you think they might not apply, as it’s easier to rule solutions out one by one rather than trying things sporadically.
Run the game as an administrator
This is often a simple fix for a game’s launcher crashing. Close Wardogs and Steam entirely and make sure no instances are running in the background. Locate the game’s launcher on your PC’s drive and right click it, then select to run as administrator. Often, this could be the easiest route to launching a game that’s crashing on startup.
Temporarily disable memory integrity
If you’re running Windows 11, this could be an issue. Open your Windows search and look for Windows Security. From there choose device security, then core isolation details. Turn off memory integrity and restart your PC. This alone might not fix your issues, but is vital to do before attempting the next step. You’ll want to remember to turn it back on after the next step, though.
Verify your game files
Open up Steam, right click Wardogs, then select properties and installed files. Choose the option that says “Verify integrity of game files.” This might take a few minutes depending on your system. Afterwards, try to launch Wardogs again.
This might work because the memory integrity feature in Windows can interfere with the way the anti-cheat loads, and might prevent it from loading properly at all. Restarting after the prior step applies the change, and verifying your files on Steam replaces any files that might have become corrupted. Make sure to turn memory integrity back on after doing this.
Repair Elytra
If the above steps haven’t worked for you, or if you already had memory integrity disabled, you’ll want to try and repair Elytra–the anti-cheat measures used in Wardogs. To do this, open Steam and right click Wardogs. Select manage and then browse local files. Open the Elytra folder, and run Elytra.exe. Select repair and wait for it to finish, then restart Steam and try launching Wardogs again. This fixes issues where Elytra may not have been installed properly, or its files don’t match your current Wardogs build.
Remove the Wardogs beta build
There were betas before Wardogs launched into early access, and some of those files might be remaining on your system. Open your Steam library and find the Wardogs Playtest option. Right click it, press manage, and then uninstall. Make sure you’re using the correct Wardogs launcher for the early access version and not the playtest version. After doing this, you’ll want to verify the integrity of your game files again, restart Windows, and try once more. If you did not install the playtest, skip this step.
Restart Windows
Funnily enough, despite all of the above steps requiring a restart, I only had success bypassing this error by doing a simple Windows restart without changing any of my settings. Close all of your programs and shut your PC down completely, then start it up again. This may have helped to unload a failed Elytra element, something wrong with the launcher, or a lovely PC mystery, but whatever the case, it worked.
If you’ve followed all of those steps, you can also contact the Wardogs support through their official Discord server, although at present there are more than 1,000 tickets in the queue, so don’t expect an early response. Hopefully one of the above measures will help, but until a new patch is released, this is an exhaustive list of things that might help to launch the game when you’re facing the WD-L014 error.
