VRC Fails to launch Steam gameoverlay UI in desktop, preventing purchase of VRChat Plus

Help!
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VRC_OverlayFailureToLaunch
VRC_OverlayFailureToLaunch1264×487 43.1 KB

Hello! Was trying to buy VRC+ today, only to find that the steam overlay does not work in VRC. Seeing as the only way to pay for plus is through the overlay, this seems to be a big problem. After searching end to end, finding only dead ended threads with random speculation and generic useless “tips” that do nothing to identify the problem, I started digging today on my own system to see what’s happening.

In the screenshot I’ve thrown together here, you’ll see that in Gunfire (random game), it launches the overlay program without issue, and it is loaded before the game can get even get to the main menu. You’ll also see next to that with VRC, after sitting idle for 5 minutes at the time of the screenshot, it has failed to request the overlay be launched at all.

I dug around in the steam launcher files, and tried to force the gameoverlay executable to launch manually, but was greeted with an error that read as follows: “GameOverlay exiting due to missing PID argument”

This seems like something was forgotten in the latest build, as VRC is not asking for the overlay to load with the program.

Troubleshooting steps I’ve tried so far:

  1. Uninstall and reinstall of both Steam, and VRC. No change. VRC remains the only program not opening the overlay.
  2. Disabling overlay in global steam settings as well as specifically for VRC then launching + closing VRC, re-enabling overlay then launching + closing VRC. No change. VRC remains the only program not opening the overlay.
  3. Deleting any and all gameoverlay related files within the steam folder, allowing the launcher to repair itself with new file downloads. No change. VRC remains the only program not opening the overlay.
  4. Running both steam + VRC in forced administrator privileges. No change. VRC remains the only program not opening the overlay.

Asking around within the discord server, I found that others have been having this same issue, so this loosely confirms that this is a problem with VRC itself, and not end user systems.

System specifications (if it has any bearing to aid with helping diagnose what’s going):
CPU: 11700k i7
RAM: 32GB DDR4
GPU: 3080ti
Storage (both Steam and VRC): 2TB SATA SSD

Help me help you: I just want to throw money at you!

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Hello, we’ve pushed out a potential fix for the issue you are experiencing. Please try restarting Steam, and let us know if the problem continues!

1 Like
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Issue resolved, gameoverlay is now requested and launched inside of VRC.

Thanks for the quick help, already on VRC+ now. :ok_hand: