Steam is by and large one of the most reliable PC gaming clients, but that’s not to say it doesn’t occasionally go haywire. Say, for example, you were trying to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 on its release day, only to get the “Game Not Released” error. What now?
There’s nothing quite like jumping straight into action on day one of a huge, critically acclaimed RPG such as Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, for one. If you were unlucky enough to log into Steam after KC: D2 was supposed to have already released only for Steam to lie straight to your face that it wasn’t out, then you’re in a pickle much as I was. The thing is, there’s an easy fix, and its name is: file verification.
How to fix the “Game Not Released” error on Steam?
Obviously, there are a few things you should try if you get the “Game Not Released” error on Steam, but the list is actually way shorter than you’d imagine:
- Restart Steam.
- Restart your PC.
- Verify your (compressed) installation game files.
More specifically, Steam appears to sometimes get confused as to whether a game is out or not if you’ve already preloaded its installation files ahead of its actual release. This is a pretty rare bug, granted, but it can happen, and only kickstarting the file verificat൲ion process helped me resolve it.
To do so, simply right-click on the game that’s giving you trouble, which was Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 in my case, then select “Properties” and then the “Installed Files” sub-menu. In this UI, just select the “Verify integrity of game files” option, and you should be good to go.
Note that it might not be necessary to actually complete the file verification process, either. Simply kickstarting it was enough to wake up my compressed pre-release game files, and I was fr𝔉ee ♎to cancel verification right away. Doing so allowed Steam to proceed with the process of unpacking pre-release files, and I was ready to play just 10 minutes after that was done!
Published: Feb 4, 2025 12:26 pm