14 DAY TRIAL // Watch Dogs on the PC platform has just been launched worldwide, and by far the biggest and most common problem experienced by users is an error with the disrupt_b64.dll file, which causes the game to crash after about 10 seconds.
Quite a few workarounds have appeared online in order to remedy this issue but we've tried out all of them and a few new ones devised by us, and still no result.
Watch Dogs was made available earlier today, May 27, on the PC via the uPlay digital distribution service. Even if you got the game from Steam or Origin, you still have to route it through Ubisoft's Uplay system, so you can't really escape it.
Unfortunately, quite a lot of errors have appeared once the game was made available worldwide, with the biggest being a crash caused by one of the game's files called disrupt_b64.dll.
As we posted earlier today in a big guide filled with workarounds for the game's PC problems, a few solutions have been uncovered by the gamers who are struggling with the issue. We've tried them out on our test PC and, so far, none of them has worked.
First up, updating the driver for the graphics card didn't work, as the computer already had the latest software from Nvidia, in the form of driver 337.88 WHQL, which was released yesterday for everyone to download.
Secondly, disabling the antivirus, a seemingly popular solution for the PC edition of Watch Dogs, also didn't change anything.
Verifying the game files using Uplay, Steam, or Origin also failed to fix the issue, as all of the services revealed that the game files were intact and that none of them was corrupted in any way.
Lastly, we tried running Uplay in offline mode, in order to see if the issue is related to the seamless multiplayer offered by the game.
This eliminated the disrupt_b64.dll crash, but unfortunately it resulted in other errors, relating to the actual loading process, which froze at around three quarters of the bar. A second time, the game loaded but experienced massive slowdowns during the opening cut scene and, when an actual gameplay sequence started, it crashed altogether.
The performance issues are quite puzzling, especially since we got the game to work on two separate computers.
As of yet, Ubisoft's representatives have yet to mention anything on the official forums or via social channels, but we can at least hope that some form of patch is in the works at the large publisher.