Has the game ever run successfully on this computer? Or never?
What antivirus app do you use? Add stellaris.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list
If you exit the Steam app and run stellaris.exe directly from File Explorer, do you get a Windows error when it fails then? Or what happens?
Download Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package MFC Security Update from Official Microsoft Download Center
A security issue has been identified leading to a vulnerability in MFC applications that are built with Visual Studio 2010 and ship the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package. www.microsoft.comDownload Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable Update 3 RC from Official Microsoft Download Center
This update is the latest in a cumulative series of feature additions and bug fixes for Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable. www.microsoft.comDownload DirectX Redist (June 2010) from Official Microsoft Download Center
The Microsoft DirectX® End-User Runtime installs a number of runtime libraries from the legacy DirectX SDK for some games that use D3DX9, D3DX10, D3DX11, XAudio 2.7, XInput 1.3, XACT, and/or Managed DirectX 1.1. Note that this package does not modify the DirectX Runtime installed on your Windows... www.microsoft.com (run dxsetup.exe after extracting from this download) THEn go here: