Yes, I realize there is a thread about this issue already, but I am having a very different experience with it at the moment than most others (I think). The issue: After installing and playing Empires 2.24 in one sitting (i.e. did not start the game up more than once), it seemed everything was fine and dandy. Until today, when I got this error for most of my games (HL2, Portal, TF2, etc.), with Empires being one of them (today would be the second time I attempted to start any games from steam since installing 2.24). The "solution": I searched around, found valve's support page and tried all their solutions. None worked, so I searched these forums and others, tried all the solutions in those, and none worked. Then, after I uninstalled all the SDK items (SDK base + the SDK itself) and all of Empires, then reinstalled the SDK items and Empires up to 2.24b (NOT the hotfix), then it worked. Sort of. After I exited I had the same error I got before. I tried what I had just done again, uninstalling and reinstalling (I tried reinstalling just Empires and then just the SDK items; didn't work), and it worked temporarily, until I exited and got the same thing. Basically, what I've got right now is a game that I have to reinstall + a little extra every time I want to play it. Doesn't take much to imagine how annoying that is. My hope is someone has a more 'long-term' solution to this, because right now it really sucks.
Deleting clientregistry.blob and appupdate blog, or deleting every thing in the steam folder except steamapps and steam.exe and letting steam reinstall itself.
Tried that already Oh, and some other stuff I forgot to mention. Installing the hotfix immediately replicates the problem, so that's a no-go from the start. I actually tried moving/temporarily deleting all of steam and reinstalling it, but that didn't help. I've gone through and tried deleting individual files (config files, random info files, etc.), which didn't do anything either. Steam is really starting to annoy me...
