I'm just never going to much like Steam I'm afraid. Boycotted it for years until it became clear that the requiring a client and internet access to play some game horse was well out of the barn, and now own a few title theres. But whenever I have problems there, I can't find help. First of all, there is no support area for Crusader Kings Complete (there is for Crusader Kings II) and the forums were no help, and I got the impression that submitting a ticket would be pointless because Steam was apparently going to claim I had to contact the makers of Crusader Kings.

So, it's once again the good folks at GOG that I turn to for help.

I try to run the game, the screen goes black, then it reemerges, with a big white box and a cursor just spinning and spinning and spinning, and that's it. Once left if there for 20 minutes to make sure. When I click while this happening, a box appears saying "BinkPlay not responding" so I close the program, and the main screen for Cusader Kings comes up.

So I try to start a game, and after picking my starting options, I click play, and the screen goes black, the menu music continues to play and, that's where it freezes. When I click "Ctr-Alt-Del" to start task manager, I see a pop up box and a program under Applications called "FATAL ERROR" so I click to end that, and thus ends Crusader Kings.

I purchased this a few months ago, and have never been able to play it once.

Can anyone help me?

I wouldn't use steam if 95% of the games I have on it weren't free.

Don't recall this error myself (and I don't currently have it installed to check).
I presume you've already checked the games properties under your library and "verified game files"?

Edit: few threads I've found just googling. Let me know which of these fixes you've tried already! The games may be different, but the problem is the same it seems.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?399873-fatal-error-could-not-initialize-video
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?21715-Video-problem-%28Bink-Player-with-EU-2%29
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/binkw32dll.htm

No, not familiar with that, but I will see if I can do that now .

Thank you.

ADDED IN EDIT:

Damn this is frustrating. I can't find any help at Steam, and I can't find any help at Paradox. I have spent more time searching for help between Steam and Paradox then I may ever put into the game itself. So fucking maddening.

Editied in a couple of help threads i found elsewhere that may have some ideas too. Let me know how it goes!

Edit (again):

another from "discussions" under the "community hub" link from the game page in your steam library:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/204940/discussions/0/828925849087052164/

Yikes, I hate it when that happens: my best bet is contacting the source directly, in that case. Try this: https://paradox.zendesk.com/home

I would also include a dxdiag with your request. Best of luck.

edit: to clarify, click the "submit new request" in the bar above.

Okay, I tried the "Verify Game Cache" under Properties>Local Files so I guess that's what you meant. I got a message "1 File failed and will be reaquired" after which I ran the "Verify Game Cache" again (Because I wasn't sure if the file had been acquired or not) and got back the message all files were okay.

Started the game again and....

Exact same result.

And after that failure, went back into "Verify Game Cache", got the "1 File failed and be reaquired" message again, AGAIN verified it had been reaquired, and AGAIN restarted the game and AGAIN. same result.

I have now put in at least three to four hours just trying to get a game to run that I paid for, and can't, and am no longer willing to put any more hours into it, but my chances of a refund from Steam are what.... about 0% right???

Fucking bullshit.

I'm sorry I wasn't any help mate. I know the frustrating agony of such situations though.
Just downloaded CK complete myself to see if i got the same, though it ran fine on my part.
For the record, from what I see the porblem is either a "compatability mode" based one, or due to a corrupt download (perhaps why you're getting the constant "1 file will be reaquired" thing - thoough i get that on some games and still have problems after a fresh install).

Sorry again I couldn't help more bud!

What you needed was Iain! - King of Steam bugfixes!

No worries, thanks for trying, I just get so tired of consumers having no damn rights whatsoever because most of my fellow consumers have chosen to given them up. I paid for the game. I downloaded the game. I met the requirements for the game. I clicked on what I was supposed to click on. I went the extra mile and tried several other things, and the game will not run. But my rights to a refund are exactly NONE and that's just not right.

An exact part of the reason why I'm sorry - if all else fails GOGlodytes usually have an answer, and I'm not the best at giving them, but still...

Well, I suppose i'm not in the best of states to help right now either.

Hope the next thing you fire up works flawlessly and saps a good six hour run out of you!

Not sure what sort of luck you're even going to have getting this running. The original CK was notoriously unstable even back in the day. You really are honestly better off waiting until a sale and just grabbing CK2.

In the meantime, I would certainly suggest contacting Paradox.

Thank, I hope you're okay too... (wondering about the second sentence). I hope things work well for you as well.

NOTE: For the record, I tried:

Searching Steam Support
Searching Steam Forums
Searching Paradox Site (that gave me nothing as every time I did a search I got back a box saying I didn't have permission to view whatever the search results were)
Starting this thread
Verifying Game Files (and Re-acquiring and re-verifying and re-acquiring and re-verifying)
Deleting Local Content and Redownloading and Reinstalling the game.
Going to the executable file in SteamApps>Common>Crusaders Kings Complete and changing the Compatibility mode to Windows XP(SP3)
Restarting my computer (several times)
Praying
Cussing
Yelling
Throwing Objects
Spitting

Maybe one or two more that I'm forgetting or am too embarrass to admit.

Way above and beyond, and I know added up in excess of over 4 hours.

And nothing.

I wouldn't even use steam if most of the games I got on there were free. :P

Figured I'd give it a try to see if the current install of CK Complete is broken but it worked right straight from the download. This is on Windows 8 (not 8.1), 1920x1080, dual monitors.

Perhaps something on your computer is blocking this Binkplay or whatever it is from working, perhaps an anti-virus or firewall? When it works at least I don't see anything Binkplay related at all, startup = video, then escape from that goes straight to loading the main menu.

A rare case might be that you're missing a codec to run the video properly, though I've only ever had that happen with JA BIA I think. Installing something like the K-lite codec pack could help there.