Just like the title says, I absolutely cannot get Steam to execute the game. From the launcher I click on "play" and then Steam tries to execute the game, only to go directly back to the launcher. When I first got the game I didn't need Steam to execute it so I was able to use the .exe provided to just play it. Later I had to download a patched .exe to circumvent Steam and now with the new updates I'm interested in just fixing this problem.

I have a clean install of Skyrim with absolutely no mods or modded files and would really like the game to work properly. Any help would be much appreciated thanks

Steam was always required. Always.

Meanwhile, pretend it never worked, and prepare a standard problem report with the standard information included.

The inital release exe didn't require Steam although it was supposed to, they patched it immediately.

Nope --- The initial release only required STEAM to activate the product afterwards using the TESV.exe file could launch the game without Steam (as advertised on the retail box -- Hence the Steam needed for activation on the Box ) but the first patch they released added a wrapper to the TESV.exe that also launches steam so now it has changed to STEAM required to play the game (which is not stated on the retail box !!! ) -- there is a key difference between the 2 and the retail boxes should be recalled to change the print so that users are made aware of the requirements instead of being mislead by them printing that STEAM connection is only required to activate.

@Seven Dragons -- have you tried verifying the files on Steam - since it is a fresh install there may be some files that are not the latest versions available on Steam keeping the game from launching -- also are you still using that modified .exe file ? IF so that would be the problem as it is different then the one Steam is looking for. (verifying the files should replace it with the correct file )

I did verify the files and everything checked out. I also moved away all files that might be considered modified out of the Skyrim folder (I had some graphics mods I was playing with in November, December when I played the game a lot).

I was one of the unfortunate persons who had to change the sound quality when the game was first released to get it to work too. After the 1.3 patch it seemed to work just fine with normal sound quality. Being partially computer savvy and not interested in going to lengths to get the game to work the way it was 'supposed' to work, I used the 4 gigabyte exe and launched the game through that for a while. Now with the new patch I want to play again, and I am genuinely concerned as to why the game won't work. It has been patched several times since release and I figured most problems that I had would be fixed by now, but the fact the game doesn't launch properly is troublesome to me.

Is it possible that there is an .ini file somewhere that might interfere with the game launching? Would a clean install not necessarily change or reinstall something of that nature?

I've tried several things, and if nothing works here on the forums I'd like to open up a formal support communication. The "Tech Support" option from the launcher seems to be lacking in exactly my problem, is there an avenue of tech support I'm not aware of? Thanks in advance.

Okay so making this thread has motivated me to troubleshoot a bit more to figure out my problem. I figured out a fix and it is most interesting to me, here is what worked and what didn't.

Having trouble with Windows security now and then on Vista and 7 I have gotten in the habit of running things as an administrator to see if that is the root of my problems. I tried doing that on both the tesv.exe and the skyrimlauncher.exe and that didn't work. I tried a few things after that. Getting desperate I decided to set my skyrimlauncher.exe to "run as administrator" in the properties so it was set to do that as default (after a few clean reinstalls it seems that the game only sets tesv.exe to run as admin by default while it leaves skyrimlauncher.exe alone). This actually worked and the game stopped going back to the launcher. Why this worked and not just right clicking the exe and running as admin I don't know (but I have a hunch it has something to do with routing everything through Steam and something gets tangled up or restarted).

Anyways that's the fix I found: setting both skyrimlauncher.exe and tesv.exe to run as admin in the properties so it does so permanently. Thanks everyone for their help and I hope this can help somebody else