The WD-L launcher codes Team17 named

Team17 named six codes in one sentence

This is the part no other page on these codes leads with, and it is the reason this page is graded differently from the rest of this section. On 12 September 2026 at 01:44, an account flagged [developer] — Team17_Assist — posted a pinned thread titled “❗Crashes❗” on WARDOGS' own Steam discussion board. It opens: “We're aware that some players are currently experiencing crashes or are unable to launch WARDOGS, including errors such as WD-L004, WD-L006, WD-L007, WD-L010, WD-L014 and WD-L020.” That single sentence is the first official acknowledgement that any of these strings exist, and it treats all six as one problem rather than six.

WD-L014, and why the hex on the end is not part of the code →

• WD-L004 — named
• WD-L006 — named
• WD-L007 — named
• WD-L010 — named
• WD-L014 — named, and the only one with its own page here, because it had dated player evidence first
• WD-L020 — named

The workaround list, as Team17 published it

Reproduced because it is the publisher's own and because this section has spent five pages saying no official steps existed for these failures. That is no longer true for the WD-L family, and pretending otherwise to keep the policy tidy would be the same failure in the opposite direction. Team17's framing matters as much as the list: it calls these “a few troubleshooting steps that may help”, and closes by saying they “are potential workarounds and may not resolve the issue for everyone” and that the team is “continuing to investigate the underlying causes”. So this is a list of things to try from the people who make the game — not a diagnosis, and not a promise.

The three longer ones, kept separate because they change your machine

Team17's post continues past the list above with three heavier suggestions. They are separated here because the last one turns off a Windows security feature, and a reader should know that is what they are agreeing to before following a numbered step. All three are the publisher's, quoted rather than recommended by this site. First: check your PC meets the minimum requirements — Windows 10 64-bit, Intel Core i5-8600 or AMD Ryzen 5 3500, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 1660 or AMD Radeon RX 590. Second: if you are on a Windows Insider build, try moving back to a standard build via Settings › Windows Update › Windows Insider Program › Stop getting preview builds. Third: some players found that disabling Windows virtualisation features — Hyper-V, Windows Sandbox, WSL2 or Virtual Machine Platform — helps, and Team17 gives full click-by-click directions for turning Memory Integrity off under Windows Security › Device security › Core isolation details.

The published WARDOGS system requirements, in full →

What is still not established

The cause. Team17 acknowledged the codes and said the team is investigating; nothing published says what WD-L004 means as distinct from WD-L010, whether the six share one fault or six, or why the workarounds work when they work. Nor has any official text mapped a code to a condition — which is why this page lists the six as named rather than tabulating what each one indicates. The anti-cheat is the common thread in the steps rather than in any statement: Elytra repair is step three, and the virtualisation and Memory Integrity suggestions are the shape of an anti-cheat load problem, but Team17 does not say that and this page will not say it for them.

0xc0000142, the other launch failure with an anti-cheat story attached →

WD-L020 has since separated from the family

Updated 30 September. Update 0.1.2 says the recent WD-L020 crash caused by Windows 11 preview update KB5124010 is fixed. Team17's earlier optional rollback path remains historical guidance. Neither source explains WD-L004, WD-L006, WD-L007, WD-L010 or WD-L014, and KB5124010 cannot explain WD-L020 reports made before the update was released.

WD-L020, Update 0.1.2 and KB5124010 →

The hex suffix is not part of your code

Worth repeating here because it decides whether a search finds anything. These codes are reported in the wild with a hex string on the end — WD-L010-699ce75a3d0c is one real example — and that suffix changes per attempt. The code is the WD-L part. Searching the whole string with the hex attached will find nothing, and pasting it into a report tells the reader's eye it is a longer, more specific code than it is.

Common questions