pcpotato459: I just bought "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition" yesterday and have installed it 3 times including the patch trying to play it. Twice yesterday and the third time this morning: before figuring out the installer is buggy in some manner how it places files because surely this is not a feature. . I have my GOG games installed on "D" drive. I do not use the client. Anyway after installing the game and patch, I click on the launch button on the installer and the game launches. I play for a few minutes to make sure it's working and it is. Now I did not complete the tut but I then come out of the game. A half hour later when I was actually ready to play, I click on the desktop shortcut which I hadn't used yet and instead of it launching the game, it takes me to the "C" drive instead ,but there is absolutely nothing Witcher 3 related there. I then go to the game folder on D drive and low and behold there isn't even game exe to click on. Say WHAT!!!!!

Anyway today I redownloaded the game again, and reinstalled it again, patched it again, and l launched it again, from the installer after reinstalling and I played the game through the tut and waited until it mentioned saving and manual saving in some village . After saving, I bravely came out of the game and the icon still didn't work. I then went back into the games files and finally there was a game exe file. I delete the non working shortcut and I made a new shortcut and moved it to the desktop . This shortcut works. I can now finally launch the game properly.

I know I rambled a bit but hopefully it will help anyone else having this same issue. I can only guess that until you play past the tut and the game saves it doesn't bother writing the rest of the folders to the game file. Why ???? I don't know but that appears to be what happens.

abbayarra: Hello,
I had the same thing happen to me as well 2 days ago.
For some reason the shortcut created after the first time starting the game is incorrect.

Go to your D drive where the game is installed. Open the folder with your game installed, go to the bin folder, then open the X64 folder. There will be a file named witcher3.exe You can right click on it and create a shortcut. Then put the shortcut wherever you want and it will work.

pcpotato459: The difference for you though was you were able to find the exe file. For me it was not to be found anywhere and I installed the thing 3 times over 2 days. The exe file was no where to be found anywhere in the game folder until I passed a certain point and the game saved.

olnorton: The witcher3.exe is in:
...\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt GOTY\bin\x64

pcpotato459: You did not pay attention to what I wrote.

There was NO exe file in the game folder at all to find. You can't click on something that doesn't exist. I always launch my games from the desktop shortcuts but this didn't work because the exe file, a shortcut is attached to was missing. I had to reinstall the game again and launch from the installer itself instead of using the desktop shortcut to get the game to play at all. You know where they give you the options to exit the launcher or to launch the game once the game is installed ? Using the installer launcher, I was able to start the game and play. Then I exited the game. and checked the game folder again and finally the exe file was finally in the folder along with some other new folders. At that point I made a new shortcut and the new shortcut works now I have a exe file.

d0x360: So you're trying to say that you played the game despite there being no exe and only after you quit did the exe show up...

I'm calling absolute nonsense. You can't play a game without the exe, full stop end of story. You had the exe you just couldn't find it. It sounds more like you ran the installer which is also launched the game. So it installed the exe BEFORE the game loaded up.

Next time try checking the games page on pcgamingwiki for all the file paths.