Very strange one here.
Today two workstations can’t seem to successfully build anything. We’ve tried existing projects, fresh projects just using the third person template, as well as two different engine versions 5.2 and 5.3
After the packages are built, the exe generated does not have the current timestamp. It has a timestamp from 1 year ago. When you try to run the exe it gives the error:
this program is used for packaged games is not meant to be run directly
Has anyone seen this before? It’s weird that it’s affecting two different workstations across two engine versions.
Edit: No idea what was actually wrong, but reinstalling Unreal 5.3 fixed it both for 5.3 and 5.2 suggesting something universal was corrupted. Weird that it happened on 2 machines.
I’m having the same problem, seemingly without logic when it will next strike.
OS: Windows 10
Unreal: 5.3.1
“This program is used for packaged games and is not meant to be run directly.” when running the exe in the build directory.
Trying brand new builds in new directories and i’m still getting an old exes (16.01.24) while the rest of the built files are from today (25.06.25). Sometimes a build will succeed, usually after restarting the whole operating sytem. It’s incredibly frustrating as there’s no deterministic fix.
From the inconsistent nature of the issue, I would say the main way to prevent builds from resuting into dated exe files, is to make sure that no old data is kept between the project, by manually performing cache clear, deleting folders Binaries, Intermediate, Saved, and DerivedDataCache, then re-building the project.
Additionally, it would help to review the Packaging docs from the community, and ensure all steps are being covered during the process:
Thanks for the tips, when you sy “manually performing cache clear” is that a specific operation or do you just mean deleting the binaries/intermediates/deriveddata folders from the project?