Starcraft II won't launch on macOS 10.14.6 (Mojave)

StarCraft II Technical Support
1

Starcraft will no longer launch on macOS. I don’t know when exactly this happened, so I don’t know which sc-version broke it (or OS version).

I can run the Battlenet launcher, but when I click “Play” that button goes dark and reads “Launching…” and I get the following macOS error:

SC2 quit unexpectedly.
Click Reopen to open the application again. Click Report to see more detailed information and send a report to Apple.

I’ve sent a report but I guess this won’t reach Blizzard. I’d wish to include the report but there is no way to provide an attachment here. If specific info is needed I’m happy to provide.

Here’s a part of the report that might be useful:

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: _LSContextInitClient queue

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
__cxa_guard_acquire detected deadlock
abort() called

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: _LSContextInitClient queue
0 libsystem_kernel.dylib 0x00007fff74dde2c6 __pthread_kill + 10
1 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff74e99bf1 pthread_kill + 284
2 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fff74d486a6 abort + 127
3 libc++abi.dylib 0x00007fff71f23641 abort_message + 231
4 libc++abi.dylib 0x00007fff71f212d3 __cxa_guard_acquire + 237
5 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x0000000100d5f086 0x100000000 + 14020742
6 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x0000000100d69a05 0x100000000 + 14064133
7 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x0000000100d73c5d 0x100000000 + 14105693
8 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x0000000100d73b29 0x100000000 + 14105385
9 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x0000000102c1bfce operator new(unsigned long) + 14
10 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff4a3bf037 invocation function for block in _LSGetSessions() + 122
11 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff74c5663d _dispatch_client_callout + 8
12 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff74c57d4b _dispatch_once_callout + 20
13 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff4a2e1044 _LSGetSession(unsigned int) + 164
14 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff4a2e0f73 _LSCopyLocalDatabase + 31
15 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff4a2e0a8d invocation function for block in _LSContextInitClient(LSContext*) + 58
16 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff74c5663d _dispatch_client_callout + 8
17 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff74c62129 _dispatch_lane_barrier_sync_invoke_and_complete + 60
18 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff4a2e0720 _LSContextInit + 369
19 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff4a31662a _LSCreateDeviceTypeIdentifierWithModelCodeInternal(__CFString const*, unsigned char const*, unsigned char) + 39
20 com.apple.SystemConfiguration 0x00007fff5497578e SCDynamicStoreCopyComputerName + 409
21 com.apple.CFNetwork 0x00007fff47c5338e -[NSHost localizedName] + 90
22 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x0000000103a3c8fc 0x100000000 + 61065468
23 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x0000000100d5f11e 0x100000000 + 14020894
24 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x0000000100d5d6df 0x100000000 + 14014175
25 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x0000000100d623a3 0x100000000 + 14033827
26 com.blizzard.starcraft2 0x000000010000bec5 0x100000000 + 48837
27 dyld 0x000000010bae2592 ImageLoaderMachO::doModInitFunctions(ImageLoader::LinkContext const&) + 506
28 dyld 0x000000010bae2798 ImageLoaderMachO::doInitialization(ImageLoader::LinkContext const&) + 40
29 dyld 0x000000010baddbea ImageLoader::recursiveInitialization(ImageLoader::LinkContext const&, unsigned int, char const*, ImageLoader::InitializerTimingList&, ImageLoader::UninitedUpwards&) + 362
30 dyld 0x000000010badcd73 ImageLoader::processInitializers(ImageLoader::LinkContext const&, unsigned int, ImageLoader::InitializerTimingList&, ImageLoader::UninitedUpwards&) + 133
31 dyld 0x000000010badce05 ImageLoader::runInitializers(ImageLoader::LinkContext const&, ImageLoader::InitializerTimingList&) + 73
32 dyld 0x000000010bacc765 dyld::initializeMainExecutable() + 199
33 dyld 0x000000010bad1709 dyld::_main(macho_header const*, unsigned long, int, char const**, char const**, char const**, unsigned long*) + 6213
34 dyld 0x000000010bacb503 dyldbootstrap::start(macho_header const*, int, char const**, long, macho_header const*, unsigned long*) + 1167
35 dyld 0x000000010bacb036 _dyld_start + 54

1 Like
2

Hello GeneralDuke!

The log is showing a very generic crash, so I am afraid it won’t be easy to find out the root cause :frowning:

Due to this as a first step I would like to suggest you to try the steps - including the advenced ones - available in this guide. After completing all of them please try the game again and see if there is any difference!

3

hi there i may think i have same problem beacuse i tried all blizzard solutions i in windows 10 and i tried all of these options it showed in that guide but none worked for me also if there is something else i can do please just say

4

Hi Felranys,

Thanks for the guide. I went through all the steps, including the advanced ones, but SC2 still won’t start. By the way, WoW (not classic) does launch properly.
Is there a way to obtain more specific crash information?

Cheers,
GeneralDuke

1 Like
5

Hey there GeneralDuke, thanks for the update!

Shot in the dark but… can you please also try the following steps?

  • Open the Apple menu
  • Go to System Preferences and then click on Sharing
  • Change the value of the Computer Name field to something different
  • Click on Edit and then Okay.
  • Close the window
  • Open the Blizzard app and reset the in-game options for Sc2
  • Test game again

I am afraid not, crash logs like the one you posted above are the only resource of information :frowning:
Since you posted only a part of the log though, in case the steps above are not having any impact on the problem please feel free to upload the entire report to an external site (eg: Pastebin) and post the link to it here (you’ll need to use the “Preformatted Text” </> button to post it). In all honesty I am afraid there won’t be many useful details, but doesn’t hurt to check anyway!

7 Likes
6

Wow Felranys, your aim in the dark is spot-on! After changing the Computer Name to something random the game launched properly (although the screen flickered a lot at first).

That surely was a fix that I didn’t see coming, any idea what went wrong?

Titanwarrior, maybe this also solves your problem?

Cheers,
GeneralDuke

1 Like
7

Glad to hear everything is working fine for you now! \o/

Well… yes… no… maybe… :stuck_out_tongue:

The type of exception listed in the crash log ( EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT) ) normally indicates that the the data passed on by the application to the system is considered “bad” by the system itself, so basically the OS is saying “You gave me bad data, then I don’t want you to run” and kills the app.

The hard part here is to find out if the bad data is effectively sent by the application, or if the data is originally good, but for some reason is then deemed bad by the system. Now… the game itself doesn’t really have a bug that prevents it from running on Mojave (or we would have like a ton of topics and not just yours XD), and at the same time if there was something effectively wrong with your OS installation you wouldn’t be probably here talking about SC2 crashing. So my guess was simply that neither the game or the system are at fault, but there may be just some sort of misunderstanding between the two XD

Oh my… from the way I am writing it seems almost the plot of a cheap soap opera :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway… to put it simply, changing the system name resets/updates a number of system preferences, and the idea here was to set things back as close as possible to a “clean” state. We have seen positive results with this process in the past, and since it doesn’t really have any negative impact on anything… here we are XD
That said, I’ll be honest with you… I can’t really list all the updates triggered by changing the system name, nor can I pinpoint exactly which preference was in case the “culprit” for the miscommunication between game and system, or for which reason :frowning:

From my understanding the problem there is a bit different, as @Titanwarrior seems to play on a Windows machine.
My suggestion here would be for @Titanwarrior to open a new topic for his specific problem so that we can look directly into it :slight_smile:

1 Like
8

Allright sounds reasonable. Fortunately you thought of this as it sounds like something that takes forever to come up with in the first place. I’ll make it part of my software-doesn’t-work-what-to-do list when there seems to be a very strange bug.

Well thanks for the script anyway :upside_down_face:

9

hm I tried this, it didn’t work so I’m re installing the game. Any idea of what to do if it doesn’t work?

10

I had the same bug when I tried to launch at optimal

11

This worked for me on macOS 10.15.5. (aka Catalina.5) Coincidentally, I had noticed that my computer name had changed to a generic “iMac”, possibly after a macOS update, a couple of weeks ago. I put the name back to what it was and Starcraft 2 took a little time, but started up fine. As someone in computer software interoperability and quality assurance, I’d say at least one of the two of you (Apple, Blizzard) has a bug, but I am happy for the recovery. Thanks

12

This worked for SC2, but I play SC remastered. SC remeasured doesn’t have the ‘reset game options’ button. Any ideas? Thanks so much.

13

I had the same issue on Mac OS Catalina (10.15.7) and followed the instructions to change computer name and reset game options and it fixed this.