Exit Code 205
You have landed on this page because the game detected an error while attempting to start.
The issue occurs because of a problem with the initialization of the Vulkan runtime, which the game relies on to start up properly.
Troubleshooting steps on Windows
For users with an NVIDIA graphics cards
Known driver issue with older Windows 10 versions
The issue is known to occur when using NVIDIA graphics card drivers in the version range of 457.51-461.72 on older Windows 10 versions (Version 1803 and older). If you encounter this start-up problem with such a configuration, please upgrade the graphics card drivers to a version later than 461.72.
Corrupted left-over AMD Vulkan runtime
The issue is known to occur in cases of a broken/incompatible Vulkan runtime (left-over AMD Vulkan runtime being used with an NVidia card after having manually removed the amd-vulkan64.json file in the Windows system directory).
You can verify whether this is the case by running the vulkaninfo tool (see the Wiki link further down) and checking whether the output you get reports the following error:
If the described problem matches yours and you manually removed the specified amd-vulkan64.json file, please restore the file from your backup. If after doing so, starting the game still redirects you to another page, follow the instructions provided on that page.
For users with AMD graphics cards
This issue applies to cases where you have an AMD graphics card installed and have reverted the installed drivers to an older version (possibly also uninstalling a manually installed graphics card driver, which then installed the Windows provided default (old) driver).
To resolve the issue, please install the latest available AMD graphics card driver for your system (either the recommended or the optional version).
For users with notebooks with both integrated and discrete graphics cards
If you are using a notebook with both integrated and discrete graphics cards, please update both drivers. Clearly you don't want to use the (slow) integrated card, but if this card has old drivers it is known that it can cause problems with detecting the (fast) discrete card. When updating, go directly to the manufacturer's website (Intel/AMD/NVidia); don't rely on Windows Update, because there are usually newer drivers available from the manufacturers.
For users of OBS
One customer who consistently ran into this problem was able to run the game after updating OBS to the latest version. If you have OBS installed and encounter this issue, try updating OBS.
Further support
If you have ended up on this page and the steps above don't apply (or don't resolve) the issue for you, please send a mail to prioritysupport@egosoft.com (Subject: Exitcode 205 - Windows), attach a screenshot of the popup you get when starting the game, the crash dump, the dxdiag and the vulkaninfo. This Wiki entry explains how to create the vulkaninfo output and this page explains how to locate the dump file on your drive.
Troubleshooting steps on Linux
We are currently investigating the exact circumstances which can lead to this happening on Linux machines. If you want to help us to track down the exact conditions, please send a mail to prioritysupport@egosoft.com (Subject: Exitcode 205 - Linux), attach a screenshot of the popup you get when starting the game and the output of vulkaninfo. This Wiki entry explains how to obtain this information.
One user reported that the game was using the (slow) integrated card, instead of the (fast) discrete card, even though the system indicated usage of the faster card. In this case, vulkaninfo reported "MESA-INTEL: warning: Performance support disabled, consider sysctl dev.i915.perf_stream_paranoid=0", and running "sudo sysctl dev.i915.perf_stream_paranoid=0" fixed the issue.
Another user reported that llvmpipe was being selecting as a graphics card. This was stored in the config.xml, resulting in a crash from that point on each time the game was started. In this case, you can try starting with the commandline parameter "gpu:1" (or "-gpu:2"), or alternatively rename the config.xml (which you can find in a hidden folder under /home/{username}/.config/EgoSoft/) in order to revert back to default configuration settings.
