KF2 Crashes in Main Menu: Steam Cloud Reset and Weapon Skins

A community player describes a main-menu crash in Killing Floor 2 that started after a 2022 update: the game freezes and closes when you open settings or most menu options, or when you press the game search button, sometimes with a BugSplat crash report from the Unreal engine. The author's cure is not a reinstall or deleting config files, and not installing .NET Framework 3.5. It is a Steam Cloud reset, and the cause turned out to be weapon skins. Compare with the general startup crashes troubleshooting guide.

Symptoms

• The game launches (sometimes very slowly), reaches the main menu, then crashes on opening Settings or other options.
• Pressing Find Game shows the logo and loading screen, then the game freezes and crashes.
• Deleting KF2 .ini files from Documents and installing .NET Framework 3.5 did not help in this case.

The crash the author was seeing.

The fix, step by step

1. In the Steam library open the game's Properties, General tab, and turn off Steam Cloud sync for Killing Floor 2.
2. Disconnect from the internet and launch the game offline.
3. Wait for the intro; you should see the brightness setup screen, which means the game fell back to factory settings.
4. Change nothing and close the game.
5. Reconnect to the internet and launch again. The graphics settings will again be at defaults. Before changing anything, minimize the game and turn Steam Cloud sync back on. This step matters.
6. Restore the game window, set up your graphics as you like and restart to apply them.

What was actually wrong

The author found that the culprit was custom weapon skins: some of them conflict with game files and make the game crash. After reinstalling the character mods they had, the problem did not return, but weapon skins should be removed or reinstalled one at a time if you see the same crash. Playing without skins is fine.