In one of its many attempts to attract customers to download the Epic Store client, Epic Games has been offering free titles each month. Unfortunately, the addition of Thomas Happ’s critically acclaimed Axiom Verge has only deepened the rivalry between PC platforms, as a missing file inconveniently named “steam” is causing a 100% crash rate in one particular area.

Epic Games found itself in a hotbed of controversy at the end of last month, as publisher Deep Silver announced that Metro Exodus would be an Epic Store exclusive. Fans expressed their annoyance at the sudden switch, particularly noting the Epic Store’s lack of cloud saves, controller support and the inability to play offline among other things.

Things escalated further when a disgruntled 4A Games developer published anonymous comments suggesting that boycotts against Metro Exodus for choosing the Epic Store would be the last in the series on PC. This has since been debunked by Deep Silver and parent company Koch Media, which take full responsibility for the decisions made and accept feedback and criticism directly.

Downloaded Axiom Verge from Epic Store (it's free and I hear it's good). Game crashes 100% entering an area. I poke around & find the log files. Turns out it's missing a sound effect: "steam". I have a pretty good idea how & why that happened, lol

— Scott LaGrasta (@NoGasta) February 7, 2019

After all of this, it’s unsurprising that a game-breaking missing file named “steam” would stir the pot further. Fortunately, the file has nothing to do with Valve’s beloved Steam platform, but rather the sound effect of a steam vent in a particular area of Axiom Verge, according to investigators on ResetEra. Players found that entering the area without the file would cause the game to crash 100% of the time.

Creator Thomas Happ acknowledged that the missing file was his fault, as he “excluded all files with ‘Steam’ in the name” when switching over to Epic. This was a precautionary measure that turned into a big “oops.” Fortunately, there is an easy fix.

Players missing the “Steam.xnb” when playing Axiom Verge on the Epic Store simply need to click the gear icon when highlighting the game within the library. From there, select “Verify” and then “Update.” Everything should continue working as planned.

For anyone missing Steam.xnb from the Epic store, please go to AV in your library, click the gear icon, Verify, then Update.

I was thinking it being Epic and all, I shouldn't include valve's dlls and such, so I excluded all files with "Steam" in the name… oops.

— Tom Happ (@AxiomVerge) February 7, 2019

Some players are complaining at the lack of quality control that was promised on the Epic Store, to which Sergey Galyonkin himself states that the game was played but the bug was not encountered. This is due to the bug being housed in the third area, and the game being a simple transfer from one store to another.

KitGuru Says: It is certainly an unfortunately misHapp… But at least it hasn’t taken long for a fix to be put in place. Axiom Verge is an incredible game for anyone that hasn’t tried it, if they can bring themselves to make the jump over to Epic’s platform. If not, there are a number of discounts thanks to Steam’s Lunar New Year Sale.

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