“Anti-Cheat Login Failed” — 1628505086 and 1628505088

Two codes, one message

Searching either number finds threads titled with the other, and the reason is in the threads themselves: on 12 September a player holding 1628505088 opened a thread whose entire body was “I get this on start up. Already tried the work around provided in the following” — and the link goes to a 1628505086 thread. The people getting these codes treat them as one failure, so this page does too, on the same reasoning that put the WD-L launcher codes on one page rather than five. What the record establishes is the wording, the two numbers, and the days each first appeared. It does not establish what distinguishes 1628505086 from 1628505088, and nobody has published that.

What the reports say about Elytra

Every dated report that names a component names the same one. The 11 September opener had already run “Elytra-Setup” and repaired the installation before posting; a reply the same day says “according to my log files its because elytra doesnt install properly and there is nothing I can to about it except waiting for an update”; a 13 September reply suggests running the anti-cheat setup in the game directory by hand because “it looks like the game forgets to auto-install it sometimes. Not 100% sure”. Steam's store listing is what names Elytra as the game's kernel-level anti-cheat, so the component is official; the claim that it fails to install is a player reading their own log, and it is recorded here as exactly that. The 18 September report matters for a different reason: it came from a player a hundred hours in whose game had worked the night before, and reinstalling the anti-cheat did not clear it. Whatever this is, it is not only a first-install failure.

What the official disclosures name, and what they do not explain →

• Reported before posting, 11 Sep: uninstall and reinstall, restart, run Elytra-Setup and repair, verify Steam files — string persisted
• Player-reported, unconfirmed, 11 Sep: launch with a VPN on to reach the main menu, then turn it off
• Player-reported, unconfirmed, 13 Sep: close duplicate game instances in Task Manager, delete the anti-cheat from the game folder, verify files, relaunch
• Player-reported, unconfirmed, 13 Sep: run the anti-cheat setup in the game directory manually
• Reported not to help, 18 Sep: reinstalling the anti-cheat from the game folder

Where Team17 has spoken, and where it has not

The nearest official text is a post pinned to the game's own board on launch day by Team17_Assistance, an account Steam flags [developer]: a high number of reports of login issues, queue placement and crashes when trying to log in, attributed to the number of players trying to log in, with “the team is investigating and we expect these to ease up as the login servers stabilise.” It is worth reading for what it does not contain. It names no error code, it does not mention the anti-cheat, and it is dated to the launch-day load event — the 18 September report above arrived eight days after the servers stabilised. Team17's other post on this board that names codes, the 12 September WD-L list, names six launcher codes and not these two. So the accurate statement is not that Team17 has said nothing about login failures; it is that nothing Team17 has said mentions 1628505086 or 1628505088.

The six WD-L codes Team17 did name →

Not WD-L004, and not “refused the game executable”

Three anti-cheat strings from the same fortnight get merged constantly, and one of the 11 September replies reports the same machine alternating between WD-L004 and this one. They are different messages at different points. The WD-L codes are printed by the launcher before the game window opens, and Team17 has published a workaround list for them. “The anti-cheat service refused the game executable” is a refusal at startup, first reported on 5 September, and has its own page. This string is a login failure: the reports say “on start up”, “cannot log in”, “when I launch the game”, and one of them describes reaching the main menu with a VPN on. If your screen shows a WD-L code, start there. If it says the executable was refused, that is the second page. If it says the anti-cheat login failed and gives one of these two numbers, you are on the right one.

0xc0000142 — the anti-cheat failure from the closed beta →

What is not established

No BULKHEAD or Team17 text checked for this section prints a numeric WARDOGS error code, and these two are no exception. Not established: what either number means, whether they are two states of one failure or two failures with one message, whether Elytra failing to install is the cause or a symptom, and whether any of the five player workarounds above works for anyone but the player who posted it. The fourth wording in the table comes from fix videos published in the fortnight after launch; they are named there because a reader may have arrived from one, and they are deliberately not cited as sources, because a channel that titles a video with an error string has demonstrated that people are searching for it and nothing else. There is no numbered fix list here, because there is nothing to print that would not be invented.

Connection and launch failures by symptom, when you have no string →

Common questions