ILS (Infinite load screen) on either the Disclaimer notice or the leaderscreens

[ExpiredReign]

This bug has just happened upon me with no apparent change from my end.
Played perfectly last night and no issues with the games I started or with the machine when I closed it down, now however today I cannot get past to actually play a game.

I've verified my game with Steam and all is as it should be.
I've disabled all superfluous programs, including one that others are saying may have issues: PlayTV from AMD's Raptr suite of tools.

• I'm on the very latest Windows 10 updates, nothing has changed for many days with those updates.
• The latest AMD Radeon driver 16.10.1
• Civ VI is 1.0.0.26 (221715) dated 10/07/2016

Now what happens when start the game, either from the desktop shortcut or from the Steam interface, the intro videos play and the disclaimer screen that has the blue button marked: "Continue" appears and I press it and it, the button, disappears and the music continues to play and the screen just stays frozen. Alt-tabbing away results in the mouse cursor remaining as that from Civ VI and the system is completely unresponsive. All I can do is soft reboot.
At other times I manage to get past that screen and can setup a game up but regardless of what settings, or which leader the large globe continue button that usually appears never shows and the text "loading..." is all I see.
Previously I could close out that screen before Sean Bean had finished the text but now he reads it all, the music continues and I'm again locked out with only a soft reboot as my recourse.

Any ideas?

 

[ExpiredReign]

I think I've tracked down the culprit.
I had to set the entire Civ VI folder as an exemption in Windows Defender. Doing so and running the game, immediately I got a notification of potential spyware and malware threat from doing so, but the game now proceeds as it should, actually it does so a little faster if I'm not mistaken.
Apparently there is something in the installation that Defender doesn't like.

Now back to picking holes in the atrocious AI. What the hell Firaxis, have you learned nothing?

 

[Barathor]

First... thank you!

My game has been running flawlessly until today when I started experiencing exactly what you've described above. (Perhaps after Defender's definitions were updated using Windows Update.)

I wanted to chime in here to back up this solution. If anybody is having the same problem and has a similar setup, as said above, try setting the Civ VI folder as an exemption within Defender's settings; it's simple. After doing that, everything works fine again; I was even able to quickly validate the game's files again via Steam which kept getting stuck while the problem was unresolved.

I actually came to Civfanatics and read this first, but I just assumed that it had to be something else (I guess because I never had to do this before), so I went onto Reddit to see if anybody else had any solutions. I tried running Steam and Civ6 as an administrator and that didn't help. Luckily, before trying anything else, I came back here and gave this a try.

 

[FooTooAy]

Does ILS mean Infinite Load Screen? You guys really need to spell out these initialisms instead of assuming everyone knows it. That would be more helpful than not doing so Therefore your hard-won solution would be available to more people...

 

[nzcamel]

I just had this problem pretty much exactly as you describe it! Thanks for posting here - it looks to be solved!

 

[Bleser]

Excluding the full Civ VI folder from Windows Defender worked for me as well. What I don't like about this long-term is now people know we're doing this, so hopefully a fix is released and we can quickly remove this workaround.

 

[nzcamel]

Annnnd it's back.

 

[nzcamel]

Windows defender is gone (another virus protection in it's place - Eset for the record) and the problem is gone

 

[dexters]

I can confirm this; was playing with no problems earlier in the day.

Checking Windows Defenders, the virus definitions had an update in the afternoon and that is when I got stuck in the ILS.
Put the Civ6 steam folder under excluded folders and it is now working again.

 

[nzcamel]

I can confirm this; was playing with no problems earlier in the day.

Checking Windows Defenders, the virus definitions had an update in the afternoon and that is when I got stuck in the ILS.
Put the Civ6 steam folder under excluded folders and it is now working again.

Glad you're sorted.
But in my case I did check if the Civ 6 folder had left Windows Defender overnight. It hadn't - it was still there as an exemption, yet I still couldn't load a game. Hopefully this doesn't become a daily problem for people...but if it does, you'll probably need a new security program