Steam file causes Epic’s free Axiom Verge to crash

Something went wrong with the free copies of Axiom Verge offered by Epic Games Store. 

Epic Games Store made the news yesterday for offering the metroidvania action-platformer indie title Axiom Verge for free for a limited time. But reports all around social media started to point out that the freebie had a crashing issue. The reason? A Steam file.

But if you’re thinking that Valve’s platform did something, you’d be wrong. The reason behind the crashes was a missing sound effect file called Steam.xnb. “For anyone missing Steam.xnb from the Epic store, please go to AV in your library, click the gear icon, Verify, then Update. I was thinking it being Epic and all, I shouldn’t include valve’s dlls and such, so I excluded all files with ‘Steam’ in the name… oops”, wrote Axiom Verge’s creator Tom Happ through his Twitter account.

For anyone missing Steam.xnb from the Epic store, please go to AV in your library, click the gear icon, Verify, then Update.

I was thinking it being Epic and all, I shouldn’t include valve’s dlls and such, so I excluded all files with “Steam” in the name… oops.

— Tom Happ (@AxiomVerge) February 7, 2019

The crash wasn’t noticeable from the beginning of the game, rather at a later point when once given level started with some steam pipes sound, and there’s where Steam.xnb missed its cue. Aside from the social media reports, Steam’s forums started to get crowded with players all around the world asking what was going on because of Epic’s Store not yet having forums to post on.

Version 1.46 of Axiom Verge has been released already by Tom Happ in order to quickly fix the issue with some funny comments on the side, acknowledging the paradox behind the episode after his title was announced to be for free on Steam’s rival store.