for some reason evrytime i press the play button a warning symbol appeares next to it saying that launching the game has failed.
Please help.

what system have you got?
i.e, Windows 10 I7 with 12G ram and Galaxy 1 install

also what antivirus

I have the sa,e problem, reinstling helps just for some time 2 or 3 days.

Sys Win 10 Intel Core i5 7400 and 16 GB of ram Gforce GT730

Not very helpful, but: same for me too. Starting the game with its .exe directly works, but not from the GOG launcher. I have Galaxy 1.2.67 by the way.
I get no error messages at all, the Play button just becomes grey one second then back to green.
Problem is: now I can't switch e.g. the game language which is only available in the launcher.

ok that is the current build of Galaxy 1... on the other hand Stellaris current build is now 2.6.2

two things to understand:
Paradox games do not show as working in Galaxy because Gog allows it

open Stellaris launcher = Galaxy will download the update... no matter what settings you have in Galaxy

that will cause the crash

Got this problem too.
Solution:
In the game directory, run the file called "launcher-installer-windows.msi". It will install Paradox Launcher - no need to run it after installation, you can remove the tick at the end.
After this, Stellaris Launcher will work without any problems - you can run the game from directory or Galaxy.
You'll be asked to login to Paradox account in Stellaris Launcher, but you can skip that.

the paradox launcher should already be installed [gog build] but it will ask if you want to repair or remove it

I got same problem here. I tried to reinstall the launcher but it didn't work.

Oh!!! I wanted to buy this game but no use buying yet another gog game that doesn't work, especially if it costs £35.

What a shame. I really do need a new and decent game that works.

It works really fine here, keeping in mind that:
- I only tried the GNU/Linux version
- I do not use the Paradox launcher

works fine for me on windows. Dunno what these folks are complaining about, the launcher installs with the game every time.

I also have this problem. Windows 10.

Launcher shows a warning message that it's unable to start the game.
There is also a warning that there is a connection problem.
Is connection to Paradox servers mandatory?

FIXED: Installed old DirectX (DirectX 9 to be precise)

no its not

+ gratz on getting it working

I, too, am on macOS 15.7 and just bought Stellaris. Getting error: “Failed to install Paradox Launcher: … permission denied“