Moon Sweepers Won’t Launch: Black Screen and Crashes
Moon Sweepers launch failures on day one fall into a few exact errors: a black screen, a dialog that says the game requires Steam while you are already in Steam, or a crash that names UnityPlayer.dll. There is no official troubleshooting page. Group the problem by the words on your screen.
Match the message
A Chinese player saw “请从steam启动游戏” while launching from Steam. The English version of that dialog is “Moon Sweepers requires steam to run.” Reinstalling did not clear it for the people who posted. I do not have a verified next step for that dialog.
| What you see | What players already tried | Result they reported |
|---|---|---|
| Black screen or freeze on startup | Relaunch | Still happening for the poster |
| “Requires Steam” / 请从steam启动游戏 | They were already in Steam | Dialog remains |
| In-game, only the tool key works | Reinstall | Poster said it failed |
| Crash, GPU at 100%, UnityPlayer.dll | Admin, -dx11, windowed, no fullscreen opt. | Still crashing on an RX 7600 |
| Stuck inside the moon after loading | Reload, unstuck request | No unstuck control |
| Linux crash after a while | boot.config gc-max-time-slice=0 | Player workaround only |
Settings that split the room
STP upscaling: one player said the crash stopped, and a 7900 XTX owner said the game then crashed immediately. Bilinear filtering lasted about 15 minutes for another person, then crashed. I would not tell you to flip either setting as a cure.
Falling through the map after a teleport is a different bug. Restarting and reloading did not bring those players back. They asked for an unstuck button. The game does not document one.
If you are on Linux, the only written workaround is the boot.config edit on the system-requirements page. Linux is not a supported platform.
Questions
Why does Moon Sweepers say to start it from Steam?
Players see that dialog even when Steam launched the game, in English and in Chinese. No public fix was posted by October 24, 2026.
Does -dx11 stop the crashes?
Not for the RX 7600 report. They had already added -dx11, windowed mode, and an admin launch.
Is there an unstuck button?
Players asked for one after falling inside the moon. No official control is documented.
Sources
Related
Updated 2026-10-24. Back to the field manual