The Civilization 6 Leader Pass introduces a new chunk of content for fans of one of the best 4X games. Unfortunately, it’s also causing chaos as the update has broken things for a chunk of the game’s player base, with many users reporting that they can’t load Civ 6 on their Windows PC, MacOS, or Linux operating systems including Proton. Developer Firaxis has released an update for the strategy game that appears to have resolved the issue for some, but many report that they still can’t get into matches, or that owned DLC is missing when they do.
Also among the reported issues was a problem with entitlements for the Leader Pass, which is free to players who either purchased the Civilization 6 Anthology or owned all Civ 6 DLC on the Steam or Epic Games store. This was not registering in some cases, with the official Civ Twitter account reporting that the issue has now been resolved and should be rolling out to all eligible players, though it notes that this “may still take some time.”
It appears that an update released after the initial issues following the release of the Leader Pass resolved issues for some players who couldn’t open the game, but many players in an extensive thread on the Steam forums report that they are still unable to open the game. Others say that they can load into Civ 6 okay, but that it is only showing the base version of the game without any purchased DLC included.
The Civilization 6 publisher on MacOS, Aspyr, has posted a message helping players on Mac systems to resolve issues causing the game to not launch correctly. This involves going through file verification and forcing it to run through system security settings. It’s certainly an awkward workaround.
Being unable to open a game is frustrating at the best of times, but it’s certainly even more unfortunate when it comes after the release of new content – and especially so when it appears that the content update itself might be the root cause. Players on the forum and responding to the devs on Twitter seem mostly asking for Firaxis to acknowledge that it is working on a fix for the issue.
In the meantime, you may want to try uninstalling all your Civ 6 mods to see whether that fixes the problem. You could also take the opportunity to read through our picks of the best Civ 6 civs to play as and our Civ 6 tier list for multiplayer so you can decide which leader to pick next. Our Civ 6 strategy guide is also a great way to get to grips with the systems, if you’re still learning how to play Civilization 6.