When I go to launch OW2 from the BattleNet app, the Play button will switch from “Play” to “Playing Now”, BattleNet will minimise, but the game window will not appear. A child process of BattleNet will appear in Task Manager called “Overwatch Application” but that’s all that seems to happen. I’ve seen this is a somewhat common issue and here are the troubleshooting steps I have tried so far (not in order).
- Restarting my PC
- Using the scan and repair tool in BattleNet
- Resetting the game settings to default in BattleNet
- Using nVidia GeForce Experience to auto-assign video settings
- Deleting the /ProgramData/Battle.net folder and having BattleNet rebuild it
- Installing and using a French language pack
- Installing and using a Korean language pack
- Running the exe file as administrator
- Setting an exception in Windows Defender
- Temporarily disabling Windows Defender
- Updating my GPU drivers
- Updating my BIOS
- Deleting and reinstalling Overwatch 2
- Deleting and reinstalling BattleNet
- Changing my BattleNet password
Are there any troubleshooting steps I missed? Are there any ways to get additional information on why the game won’t launch?
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I’ve had this issue since the launch of the new season. Yes, all of the above help, depending on the issue. I’ve gotten various combos of these to work in the past but it’s been random.
If you have Razer accessories, this is what I have been doing and it’s been working every time for me.
- Go to task manager and close anything Razer. I usually have 5-6 processes. End them all. (Synapse, Gamemanagerservice, central, central service, etc.)
- Launch game through GeForce Experience.
- The initial launch fails. It’s on the second or third time I click on “Play” that is actually boots.
- Restart Razer Synapse so that your devices work.
- Get infuriated playing Overwatch. You love it, don’t get me wrong. But it’s such a frustrating game lol.
My game has not been working for over a week. I just disabled and re-enabled Secure Boot in an attempt to load Valorant for the first time lol… I checked OW out of habit and it opened for the first time! Not sure why but perhaps it helps somebody else 
Not sure if this will help but I ran into the same issue – the only difference was that I would click “Play”, get the black screen right before it would go to the main loading screen but it would hang there on the black screen.
I tried most of what you tried. What I found that worked was going to the Windows Power settings (for Win11) and change it so that OW2 launched using my integrated graphics card, not my video card.
It launched (but unplayable since on integrated) so I changed the settings from full screen to borderless window. Closed it then change the power setting back to high performance (using graphics card) and it worked.
I’ve done literally everything the original poster did and this game still does not launch.
It used to be that when I clicked on “Play” it would say “Playing” and then revert back to “Play” but the game would never launch.
Now, when I click “Play”, it stays on “Playing” and I see the background task but the game never actually launches. Forcing me to end the application in Task Manager.
Has anyone made progress on this? It’s been happening intermittently for the last 3 months and now the game is completely unplayable.
I’ll also add, this is happening on two workstations. So its not a hardware issue or driver issue.
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I m also having this issue and am yet to find a fix.
Is there a way i can run some kid of report to see what’s causing the issue?