Game library within the Battle.net client keeps updating

Desktop App Bug Report
41

We are now into August, 2022, and this is STILL an issue.

42

MAY HAVE FOUND A TEMPORARY FIX:

Create a desktop shorcut for the game you want and that is glitched, then while having the battlenet app open, try opening the desktop shortcut of the game instead, seems to fix the issue, cheers!

43

having the same issue for at least 2 months. its REALLY annoying and nothing fixes it

44

been having this issue from the beginning of my install when ow2 came out and has persisted through multiple reinstalls. it’s making my games unplayable bc they ALWAYS have an update and it ALWAYS gets stuck “waiting for another update”.

i launched the mw2 remaster to close it not even a full minute later and it already had an update waiting. and just the other day i was getting notifications every 15 minutes ish to tell me that the game had updated and was now playable

45

End of November 2022 and, yes ofc, this is still an issue.
Today I tried opening a ticket asking for help. I will update this post if there are any news.

46

Still broken. Very annoying.

47

Same here! Having the problem since i got a new fresh PC and Windows 11. When i played with my older PC on Windows 10, i wasnt having this issue :confused:

48

Same issue Here, I has been more than a year, and the problem still is here, there is no soluction to this problem yet?

2 Likes
49

Seeing this also on Windows and Linux.

50

I’ve been having this issue for months now

51

Same issue…since last night…really frustrating :frowning:

52

I can’t believe this hasn’t been fixed in 2 years

53

This bug is single-handedly killing my desire to play blizzard games because when I think I want to play, I immediately remember the launcher and get scared, and find something else to do instead.

Sounds weird but… I just don’t want to deal with this mess when I’m trying to relax.

54

I just helped multiple friends with this on Windows. What I find really interesting is I have never experienced this. Both Battle.net and WoW are installed to a disk where my user account is the owner of all contents. One person mentioned it then the rest piped up. They linked me this thread too as “we’re not the only ones” so I looked into it.

The problem stems from permissions. If you have Battle.net and/or any games installed to their default locations, you need to alter permissions of the folders and the files contained. This can easily be done with PowerShell. Press WIN + X then A to open PowerShell as admin. The example commands below are only for the Battle.net application and its data. I have chosen to not write a complex script so you can see what these commands do more easily.

# Set these paths as variable
$bnet = "$env:programfiles (x86)\Battle.net"
$bdata = "$env:programdata\Battle.net"
# Own the directories
takeown /f $bnet /r /d y; takeown /f $bdata /r /d y
# Reset permissions
icacls $bnet /t /q /c /reset; icacls $bdata /t /q /c /reset
# Disable upper level inheritance and strip permissions
icacls $bnet /inheritancelevel:r; icacls $bdata /inheritancelevel:r
# Grant these users full permissions and set inheritance of bnet
icacls $bnet /t /grant "YourWindowsAccountNameHere:(OI)(CI)F"
icacls $bnet /t /grant "Administrators:(OI)(CI)F"
icacls $bnet /t /grant "Users:(OI)(CI)F"
icacls $bnet /t /grant "INTERACTIVE:(OI)(CI)F"
# Grant these users full permissions and set inheritance of bnet data
icacls $bdata /t /grant "YourWindowsAccountNameHere:(OI)(CI)F"
icacls $bdata /t /grant "Administrators:(OI)(CI)F"
icacls $bdata /t /grant "Users:(OI)(CI)F"
icacls $bdata /t /grant "CREATOR OWNER:(OI)(CI)F"

You may need to repeat this for games if they are installed to their default locations.

Now you need to clear Battle.net cache
https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/34721

1 Like
55

Thanks for sharing this! I’ve been experiencing this issue as well playing on Linux, where I have Battle.net and WoW installed via Wine on a separate disk/partition from the rest of my data.

Total shot in the dark, but do you have any ideas/suggestions for applying these permission fixes on Linux? As far as I can tell, Wine doesn’t seem to implement icacls or takeown, but both commands have Unix equivalents chmod and chown, although my understanding is that the Windows commands work slightly differently due to how DACLs work on Windows. How does your script solve the underlying problem — is the root cause just that the Battle.net Agent process runs as a particular user which lacks read/write access to the directories? That might give me some intuition into how to fix this.

1 Like
56

How does your script solve the underlying problem — is the root cause just that the Battle.net Agent process runs as a particular user which lacks read/write access to the directories?

It would appear so. But after a system restart the problem is back. As long as the system remains on, the problem no longer exists. I ended up moving my Bnet and WoW install to their default locations to replicate what my friends were seeing.

What I have found out is the Bnet is doing a permission check each time you see “Updating” instead of “Play” on the blue button. I used some tools from SysInternals to monitor behavior. It actually sets its own ACL. Setting a custom ACL allows the Bnet app to “correct” permissions without prompting for elevation. Once it does that, it never asks for elevation again and the blue button is always “Play” as soon as the launcher is started from a completely terminated state.

Basically this is a permission fault with the launcher. My suggestion only fixed it temporarily. Blizzard needs to fix this permanently on their end.

1 Like
57

Here is the fix:

  • go to C:\ProgramData\Battle.net\Agent\Agent.8279\Logs
    (8279 in my case, you will see a different number)
  • open the most recent Agent-20230618T165536.log file.

In my case there were many errors like:
[E 2023-06-18 16:56:10.0868] Win32Permissions: Win32 GetNamedSecurityInfo(123) - 'C:/BattleNetGames/World of Warcraft/_classic_/Interface_backup/addons_backups/AddOns/Skillet-Classic/Libs/LibPeriodicTable-3.1/LibPeriodicTable-3.1-TradeskillResultMats/LibPeriodicTable-3.1-TradeskillResultMats.lua'

  • Removed all the mentioned files in the logfile and now the reoccurring update bug is resolved.

I also deleted the battle.net folder inside my wow installation (C:\BattleNetGames\World of Warcraft\.battle.net), but I think this is not necessary.

58

Appreciate your input Rarw. This won’t work for some people as they can’t just remove files it complains about. In your case it’s backup files you have created.

In my case it’s a git repo. The files it says it’s having trouble with are the ones located in .git. It erroneously thinks they are set with a read-only flag. It tries to unset it but can’t, so it fails resulting in an update loop. Some of my addons are git repos due to development. I viewed these files myself and there is no such flag set. I checked with multiple permission tools. Even Windows GUI has the box cleared for “Read only” so I don’t know what the launcher is thinking here. I manually ran a read-only clear and started the launcher. It then set the permissions as expected.

My solution was to run a script on event ID 4689 with wow.exe as the match. The script recursively clears the read-only flag that may exist on files in .git. I really do not understand why it would it be having issues with this suddenly. It never complained in the past and didn’t I until manually moved the install. But after setting this up it no longer has issues.

All this confirms it is an app issue. I have doubts it is going to be fixed anytime soon. Or maybe even at all.

59

It sux, im getting the same issue to i play a couple of games and then the game shuts itself down because of the update loop it is doing. I have tried to uninstall it and reinstalled but still doing the same thing. Im tired of having it do it because i am in the middle of a grind and end up losing everything. It needs to be fixed immediately.

60

i have traced the problem to windows 10. i can explain that a bit better however. it never occurs in windows 7 or in 8.1 but, always in windows 10. i have had windows 10 on 2 pcs where i have battle.net installed and it happens on both. i have battle.net on one pc with windows 7 and one pc with windows 8.1 and it never occurs on either. the trick to figuring out how to fix it is to find out what windows 10 does differently. it is not limited to games running through battle.net however. it also happens to certain games running through steam.