Renpy game not launching on certain monitor configurations

[unregistered]

Some of my users have reported that my Ren'Py games no longer start on their systems.

The games close immediately without any message or log. It doesn't reach the presplash screen graphics and is not staying into memory. It seems to be a new issue for some, probably related to Windows 11 and/or system settings or drivers.

Yesterday, I believe I was able to reproduce this issue with one particular setup at a place of one of my users.

It occurs when playing the game with an external monitor and duplicating the screen on both the PC and the external monitor. The test OS used was Windows 11, and the monitor in this case was a Samsung SmartTV, connected via HDMI. The games tested were compiled with RenPy 7.5.0 and 7.4.4.1439.

This is the behavior observed:

- No external monitor connected: Everything works.
- External monitor connected with the desktop being extended on both displays: Everything works.
- External monitor connected with the desktop being duplicated on both displays: No reaction when clicking the game.

However, I can play the game with the problematic setting (duplicated monitors) if I start the game before the monitor is connected (or in extended mode). In short: I start the game, connect the monitor - it works. I connect the monitor, start the game - it does nothing.

The problem was also gone when switching to a Windows 10 machine.

My guess is that it's related to the display settings of the OS, the renderer and/or the monitor or some DRM, but I'm not sure. Does anybody know how to solve this? What can I tell my users (who are not very tech-savvy)?

What bugs me is, that the problem seems to grow. From having no problems for years, we got these feedbacks in greater numbers recently. It might be related to users migrating to Windows 11.