How to Fix ForgeTax Crash on Launch, Freezing, and Black Screen Issues on PC

You’ve been waiting to hammer swords, gamble your fortune, and stare down a dragon who wants his cut. You hit Play on Steam and get a black screen, a freeze, or a game that vanishes before the logo even loads.

I’ve been there, and it’s infuriating. ForgeTax from GraveYardDev is a dark, first-person forging roguelite with a great loop, and it’s been blowing up on PC since release. A chunk of players are also stuck at the front door with launch crashes. Indie games on modern engines do this a lot: weird system setups, stale drivers, busted files, or some background app butting in.

I went through Steam community threads, Reddit posts, and PC optimization boards and kept the fixes that actually helped people. Work through them in order. Most players get sorted somewhere in the first four.

The Outlast Trials Best Meta Loadout Guide (2026): Top Tier Rigs and Amps Setup

Check Your Specs First

Before touching any settings, make sure your rig can run the thing. If the hardware falls short, the game just shuts itself down at launch.

If you’re under minimum, that’s your answer. If you’re well above it and still stuck, keep reading.

Fix 1: Verify Game Files on Steam

This is the usual suspect. A spotty connection during install, or a hotfix that got interrupted halfway, can corrupt an executable or a texture file and the game falls over on boot.

1. Fully close ForgeTax, including any background process.
2. Open Steam and go to your Library.
3. Right-click ForgeTax and pick Properties.
4. Open the Installed Files tab (older clients call it Local Files).
5. Click Verify integrity of game files.

Steam compares your files to the official manifest and re-downloads anything broken or missing. Depending on your drive, that can take a few minutes. Restart your PC afterward, then try launching.

Fix 2: Clean Install Your Graphics Drivers

Bad drivers cause more launch crashes than anything else. ForgeTax calls graphics APIs the moment it starts, and a flaky driver can choke right there.

• Figure out whether you’re on NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel.
• Grab the newest driver for your exact GPU and Windows version from the manufacturer’s site.
• Pick Custom Installation and tick Perform a clean installation. That wipes old driver leftovers and cached junk.
• If you want the scorched-earth route, boot into Windows Safe Mode and run Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) before installing the new driver.
• Reboot right after, no excuses.

Fix 3: Run as Admin and Try Compatibility Mode

Windows sometimes locks an app out of folders or memory it needs. If ForgeTax can’t read or write on startup, it just drops to desktop with no error window, which is the worst way to fail.

1. In Steam, right-click ForgeTax, go to Manage, then Browse local files.
2. Find ForgeTax.exe.
3. Right-click it, hit Properties, then open the Compatibility tab.
4. Check Run this program as an administrator.
5. Also check Run this program in compatibility mode for and choose Windows 8. This tends to calm down conflicts on newer Windows 11 builds.
6. Hit Apply, then OK, and launch straight from that exe.

Fix 4: Force the Dedicated GPU (Laptop Players, This One’s for You)

Gaming laptops and hybrid setups love to run games on the weak integrated graphics instead of your real GPU. Integrated chips usually don’t have the VRAM, so ForgeTax dies instantly. If you’re on a laptop and haven’t checked this, do it now.

NVIDIA Users

1. Right-click the desktop and open NVIDIA Control Panel.
2. Go to 3D Settings, then Manage 3D settings.
3. Open the Program Settings tab and click Add.
4. Select ForgeTax from the list, or browse to its .exe.
5. Change the preferred graphics processor from Auto-select to High-performance NVIDIA processor.
6. Click Apply.

Generic Windows 10/11 Method

1. Press the Windows key, type Graphics Settings, and hit Enter.
2. Pick Desktop app under the dropdown and click Browse.
3. Add the ForgeTax executable.
4. Click its icon, choose Options, select High performance, and Save.

Fix 5: Update DirectX 11 and Visual C++ Redistributables

ForgeTax leans on DirectX 11 and the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime libraries. If those are missing or broken on your machine, the engine can’t even start.

• Download the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer from Microsoft’s official page.
• Head to Microsoft’s Visual C++ downloads hub and grab both x86 and x64 versions of the ‘Visual Studio 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022’ redistributable.
• Run both. Choose Repair if it finds an existing install, or do a fresh install if not.
• Restart your PC so the libraries register properly.

Fix 6: Kill Overlays and Check Your Antivirus

Overlay apps that paint stuff on top of 3D games are famous for wrecking day-one launches on indie titles.

1. In Steam, go to Steam > Settings > In-Game and turn off Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game.
2. Open Discord, find Game Overlay in user settings, and switch it off.
3. Disable the same kind of thing in GeForce Experience, AMD Software Adrenalin Edition, MSI Afterburner, Rivatuner Statistics Server, and OBS Studio.
4. Check your antivirus. Windows Defender sometimes flags legit game files as threats. Open Windows Security, go to Virus & threat protection, and look at Protection history. If ForgeTax got blocked, restore the file and add the whole game folder to your exclusions.

Fix 7: Wipe the Config Files

A bad resolution value or a corrupted graphics cache in the game’s local settings can trap you in a crash loop. Deleting those files forces ForgeTax to build fresh defaults.

1. Press Windows Key + R, type %appdata%, and hit Enter. That opens AppData\Roaming.
2. Look for a GraveYardDev or ForgeTax folder. Not there? Click AppData in the address bar and check the Local and LocalLow folders.
3. Inside the ForgeTax folder, find files like config.ini, settings.json, or similar preference files.
4. Delete them or move them somewhere else. Leave your saves folder alone if you care about your progress.
5. Relaunch from Steam. The game will generate a clean config matched to your system.

Still Stuck?

If all seven fixes fail, check the game’s Steam community hub. GraveYardDev may have pushed a launch-stability patch, and other players with your exact setup are probably posting workarounds there. Now go pay that dragon.