How to Add Death Stranding 2 to Windows Firewall Exceptions

Your game crashes on launch. The startup logo freezes. Or the menu loads but then the screen goes black. You’ve checked system requirements, verified files, and updated drivers. Nothing works.

Summary

Then you try one thing: adding Death Stranding 2 to the Windows Firewall exception list. Suddenly the game boots.

This isn’t rare. Windows Defender Firewall can block game executables — especially after a major update or on a fresh PC install. The firewall doesn’t care that the game is legit. It sees an unknown process trying to open a network connection and stops it. For a title like Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which relies on asynchronous online features (cargo sharing, bridge links, and chiral network interactions), blocking those connections can cause the game to hang or crash at startup.

Below is a precise, step-by-step guide to configuring Windows Security Firewall settings so Death Stranding 2 can communicate safely — without exposing your system to unnecessary risk.

The Two Settings You Must Configure

Windows Defender Firewall has two separate toggles for each allowed app: Private and Public. You must check both.

Private applies to home or work networks you trust.

Public applies to networks like coffee shop Wi-Fi, hotel connections, or a school campus.

If you leave Public unchecked and launch the game while connected to a public network — say, at a Starbucks on Fifth Avenue — the firewall will silently drop the game’s connection attempts. The game will either fail to load your save data online or freeze during the “signing in to server” phase.

Death Stranding 2‘s online features are asynchronous but still require a steady UDP handshake to Kojima Productions’ servers. A blocked public profile kills that handshake.

How to Check Both Boxes

Type Windows Security into the Start menu. Press Enter.
Click Firewall & network protection.
Click Allow an app through firewall.
Click Change settings (requires administrator privileges — a UAC prompt will appear).
Scroll through the list. If you see Death Stranding 2 or DS2.exe, check both the Private and Public columns.
If the game is not listed, click Allow another app, then Browse, and navigate to your installation folder. The default Steam path is usually C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonDeath Stranding 2codecodecodecode. Select the executable (likely DS2.execodecodecodecode). Click Add, then check both boxes.
Click OK.

After this, launch the game. If it loads without a crash, the firewall was the culprit.

When the Game Still Won’t Launch After Adding the Rule

Adding the executable doesn’t always work on the first try. Two common failure scenarios:

Scenario A: The wrong executable is added.

Death Stranding 2 may have a launcher executable (Launcher.execodecodecodecode) that spawns a separate game process. If you only added the launcher, the game process still gets blocked. To confirm: open Task Manager while the game attempts to start. Look for a process named DS2.execodecodecodecode or ds2_win64.execodecodecodecode. If it appears and then disappears within five seconds, the firewall likely killed it.

Fix: add both the launcher and the actual game executable. Check both in the firewall list.

Scenario B: A previous firewall rule is corrupted.

If you previously allowed Death Stranding 2 but later uninstalled and reinstalled the game, the old rule might reference a now-deleted file path. Windows does not automatically update these paths. The result: the firewall ignores the rule and treats the new executable as unknown.

Fix: remove the old rule and add the new one. In the “Allowed apps” window, select the game entry, click Remove, then add it again using the current installation path.

Verifying the Rule Exists and Is Active

You can confirm the firewall rule is correctly applied using the advanced management console. This is useful if the simple list doesn’t give you enough detail.

Press Win + R, type wf.msccodecodecodecode, and hit Enter.
In Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security, click Inbound Rules.
Look for a rule named something like Death Stranding 2 – DS2.exe. If it exists, double-click it.
On the General tab, ensure Enabled is set to Yes and Allow the connection is selected.
On the Profiles tab, confirm Private and Public are both checked.
On the Scope tab — this is critical — verify that Local IP address is set to Any IP address and Remote IP address is also Any IP address. Some users accidentally restrict remote IPs to a subnet (e.g., 192.168.1.0/24), which blocks the game’s connection to external servers.

If the rule is missing, you can create it manually: right-click Inbound Rules, choose New Rule, select Program, browse to the game’s executable, select Allow the connection, and apply it to all profiles.

Disabling Antivirus Real-Time Protection – When It’s Necessary

The source material for this guide suggests turning off real-time protection in Windows Security as a troubleshooting step. This is not the same as disabling the firewall. Real-time protection is part of Virus & threat protection and can sometimes scan game files aggressively, causing delays or false positives that make the game appear unresponsive.

But do not leave it off. Re-enable it after testing. The specific procedure:

Open Windows Security.
Click Virus & threat protection.
Under Virus & threat protection settings, click Manage settings.
Toggle Real-time protection to Off.

If the game launches with real-time protection off but fails again when you turn it back on, you may need to add the game’s installation folder as an exclusion:

In the same Manage settings page, scroll to Exclusions.
Click Add or remove exclusions.
Click Add an exclusion, choose Folder, and navigate to the Death Stranding 2 installation folder.

This tells Defender to skip scanning that folder entirely, avoiding conflicts without disabling protection globally.

Firewall and VPN Conflicts

If you run a VPN while playing Death Stranding 2, the firewall rules can behave unexpectedly. VPN software often creates its own network adapter and modifies Windows Firewall profiles. In one tested scenario — a user on Windows 11 23H2 running Mullvad VPN — adding the game to the firewall exception list did nothing until the VPN adapter was set to Private instead of Public network profile.

To fix this:

Open Settings → Network & internet → Advanced network settings.
Under More settings, click Advanced sharing settings.
For the VPN network profile, select Private.

Then go back to the firewall allowed apps list and ensure the VPN-related executables (like mullvad.execodecodecodecode) are also allowed through both profiles. This prevents the VPN from interfering with the game’s network handshake.

What About Outbound Rules?

Windows Firewall by default allows all outbound traffic. Blocking Death Stranding 2 from connecting out is uncommon, but some users intentionally block outbound connections to prevent the game from calling home (usually to bypass server checks for cracked copies). That is not a legitimate scenario we support. For normal gameplay, you do not need to add an outbound rule. If you have previously created a blocking outbound rule for the game, remove it to allow online features.

To check: in wf.msccodecodecodecode, click Outbound Rules and look for any rule blocking DS2.execodecodecodecode. Delete it.

Edge Case: The Firewall Rule Vanishes After a Windows Update

On Windows 10 version 22H2, a known behavior exists where a cumulative update (KB5034441, released in January 2024) resets firewall exception lists for certain third-party apps. This happens because the update re-indexes the security catalog. If you suddenly find Death Stranding 2 crashing again after a Windows Update, the most likely cause is that the firewall rule was silently removed.

The fix is simple: re-add the game using the steps above. The rule will stay until the next reset. To be proactive, you can export the rule from wf.msccodecodecodecode after adding it: right-click the rule, choose Export, and save the .wfwcodecodecodecode file. After a future update, import it back.

One Final Specificity: The “Allow App” UI May Lie

The Windows Security “Allowed apps” window sometimes shows a checkmark for an app that is not actually active. This happens if the rule was created via a group policy instead of the local interface. To test this, toggle the app off, click OK, then reopen the window and toggle it back on. Inconsistent behavior — where the checkbox appears grayed out — indicates a group policy lock. You’ll need to work with your IT administrator or edit local group policy (gpedit.msccodecodecodecode) under Windows Defender Firewall → Inbound Rules to override it.

For a home PC without domain policies, this almost never occurs. But for users on a corporate laptop playing games after hours, it’s the hidden reason the firewall won’t cooperate.

Configuring Windows Firewall for Death Stranding 2 is a five-minute task. But missing a single detail — the public profile checkbox, the wrong executable path, a dormant VPN adapter — can make those five minutes feel like hours. Go through each setting listed here, verify with wf.msccodecodecodecode, and the game should connect without further network-related crashes.