How to fix Sea of Thieves Unable to Launch Issue on Steam

Sea of Thieves Unable to Launch
Sea of Thieves Screenshot

Sea of Thieves is an action-adventure game developed by Rare and published by Xbox Game Studios. The title was originally available on PC via Microsoft Store, but players can now buy it through Steam as well. Most technical problems with the title are already fixed, however, if you are running into the Sea of Thieves Unable to Launch Issue on Steam, here’s how to fix it.

Xbox Game Studios has brought over plenty of titles to Steam. These include both Ori games, Gears 5, Gears Tactics and more. We’re happy to see players getting the option to choose their client when it comes to buying titles on PC.

Sea of Thieves Unable to Launch Issue

If you are on Steam and are running into this issue, here’s how you can fix it. The problem is occurring for players because third-party antivirus softwares are flagging the title as potentially harmful.

To resolve this, add the following location and executable to your anti-virus’s exception folder.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sea of Thieves\Athena\Binaries\Win64\sotgame.exe

Add either the Sea of Thieves folder, or the sotgame.exe to the exception.

If you are unsure on how to complete the whitelisting process we have included guides for the most popular products below:

AVG

  • Open AVG
  • Select menu> Settings> Exceptions
  • Click Add Exceptions
  • Select Browser
  • Navigate to the Sea of Thieves Steam exe file
    • As mentioned above, the default location is : C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sea of Thieves\Athena\Binaries\Win64
  • Select the EXE
  • Press OK
  • Reboot Sea of Thieves 

Avast

  • Open AVAST
  • Select menuSettingsExceptions
  • Click Add Exceptions
  • Select Browser
  • Navigate to the Sea of Thieves Steam exe file
    • As mentioned above, the default location is : C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sea of Thieves\Athena\Binaries\Win64
  • Select the EXE
  • Press OK
  • Reboot Sea of Thieves

If you want to see how it’s done in your anti-virus software, simple search Anti-virus Software Name + exception.

After this, the game should run fine.

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