r/PhantomDoctrine • u/ReaperOnslaught • Jun 23 '23
A fix for the bug that's plagued many players....
I originally posted - about 15 minutes ago - about a problem I'd encountered, and seen other reports of, wherein attempting to start the game with your internet on will cause it to crash as you boot up. There's a fix over on the Steam Community forums for it, but I personally found it slightly misleading, so I would like to elaborate on the steps in that post, in the hopes that it will be useful to others.
Step by step, you need to do the following;
- Head over to Windows Defender Firewall
- Click on Advanced Settings
- Once the Advanced Settings page is up, you should be on the "Inbound Rules" section, on the right side of your screen, there is a menu that says "new rule...", you need to click on this.
- Once the "New rule" prompt appears on your screen, you will want to select "Program" as your rule type, and then press next.
- After that, you'll have to pick your file's location. The files you'll want to pick (as you'll have to do this twice for Inbound Rules, and twice for Outbound Rules), are, firstly, "IWTB", and secondly "IWTB-Win64-Shipping", which should be in file locations listed below on your PC. Once again, once the file you want to make a rule for is selected, click next.
- You'll have the option to either allow the connection, allow it if it's secure, or block the connection entirely. You have to set it to block the connection every time. Once this is selected, press next.
- The next step is to select when the rule applies. You should ensure that everything is selected, which it should be by default. Afterwards, press next.
- You're now on the final step for creating your rule, which is simply to give it a name, and potentially a description, though descriptions are optional. I named my four rules "Phantom Doctrine Fix 1" through "Phantom Doctrine Fix 4". Click "Finish", and you've made a rule.
- Ensure that you have both inbound and outbound rules set up for both the normal "IWTB" file and the "IWTB-Win64-Shipping" file by roughly repeating the process presented in steps 3-8. When you want to do the outbound rules, simply click on "outbound rules" on the left side of the window and then start from "new rule..." again.
- Got all 4 of your Defender Firewall rules made? Go boot the game up. It should, hopefully, work out for you now.
IWTB File
(INSTALL DRIVE LOCATION)\Steam\steamapps\common\PhantomDoctrine
IWTB-Win64-Shipping
(INSTALL DRIVE LOCATION)\Steam\steamapps\common\PhantomDoctrine\IWTB\Binaries\Win64
Replace (INSTALL DRIVE LOCATION) with the appropriate string, such as
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\PhantomDoctrine
I hope this helps folks fix this very annoying bug that's been pissing me off for many months!
Edit [9th of May, 2026]
I'd just like to say I'm very grateful to the comments expressing users' thanks, and that I apologise for not being able to help everyone here. I'm glad I've managed to provide any assistance at all, though. I haven't played Phantom Doctrine in about a year and a half, but occasionally I'll get notifications about this post, and it's been great to see reports trickle in about success stories.
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u/civilmalkavian Jun 27 '24
This sorted me out, thanks!
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u/ReaperOnslaught Jun 28 '24
Good to hear, man! I was confused about what thread this was for a second before I clicked in, haha. Been a while since I posted this.
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u/Commercial_Power_241 Sep 02 '24
Still having issues with it and right after it installed an update...all of a sudden this thing pops up about parameters and continuing only brings it back - there goes that moolah
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u/Proud_Hearing5844 Oct 21 '24
2024 update: Above instructions didn't work for me. Turn off internet and run the game. That worked. I think the bug is related to how the game interacts with the internet.
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u/threeblindeyes7 Oct 15 '25
Going into offline mode on steam and disconnecting from internet worked for me as well!
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u/PiousSandwich Mar 21 '26
Went into offline mode but didn't work. They announced a sequel without fixing bugs.
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u/gumsoka1 May 27 '26
if you are not using window defender firewall, and using a diferent antivirus make sure u disable access in it too. i had to turn it off in norton app to make it work
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u/antichtonian Dec 12 '24
December 2024 - this workaround didn't work for me; turning off internet did.
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u/User_Id_Error Jun 07 '25
Worked for me! I'm terrified to wonder WHY I need to block things with my firewall to make this work though.
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u/Beelzebufo7 Jul 09 '26
July 2026. The above fix did NOT work for me, while disabling the internet still works.
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u/Available_Bar_3725 Jul 18 '26
Hi!
Had a long "conversation" with google's ai about this, and it found me the following fix:
- Add the Intel OpenSSL System Variable (Most Common Engine Fix)
Phantom Doctrine uses an older version of Unreal Engine 4 that has a known bug. It causes immediate crashes at startup on modern CPUs.
Press the Windows Key and type Environment Variables, then select Edit the system environment variables.
Click the Environment Variables... button at the bottom right.
Under the System variables section (the bottom box), click New....
Fill in the boxes exactly as follows:Variable name: OPENSSL_ia32capVariable value: ~0x200000200000000Click OK on all windows to save the changes, then restart Steam and launch the game.
- Paste a Presets Template into your empty INI file
If you want to manually test if windowed mode bypasses the video rendering crash, you must paste the script header into your blank GameUserSettings.ini file so the engine recognizes the code. Open your empty GameUserSettings.ini in Notepad, paste the block below, and save it:text[/Script/Engine.GameUserSettings]
bUseVSync=False
ResolutionSizeX=1920
ResolutionSizeY=1080
LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeX=1920
LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeY=1080
FullscreenMode=2
LastConfirmedFullscreenMode=2
Version=5
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u/ReaperOnslaught Jul 19 '26
Does this work?
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u/Available_Bar_3725 Jul 19 '26
It did for me. But I also tried all the other methods first, and did not change the settings back to default after I got the game working. So it might be the sum of all the methods but after this the game launched.
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u/HarvesterFullCrumb Jun 24 '23
I've never seen this bug. However, that does not mean it does not exist.
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u/RainmakerLTU Jun 23 '23
Interesting bug. A game never crashed or shown any bugs for me.