UE4 Game Module Error

[pftq]

<h2>"Game module could not be loaded. There may be an operating system error or the module may not be properly set up."</h2>

After reinstalling Unreal Engine, my project stopped loading up. The above error message was extremely unhelpful, especially as any search for it online referred to moving DLLs around which had nothing to do with my issue. It turns out what was missing was the exact version of Visual Studio that I had when I last worked on my project. It has to be the exact version with the extras for C++ game development included. Any newer or older version still returns the same error. In my case, it was Visual Studio 2019 paired with Unreal Engine 4.23.1; it took me a few reinstalls just to figure that out because the help docs point you instead to Visual Studio 2017.

This is more a reminder for myself in the future to avoid losing a day to this again, but maybe it helps save someone else the time as well.

[Musashi]

This was happening to me today!  I had VS2019 on one computer, got a new one that installed 2017 when I had UE4 do it, and started getting this error at weird times, even when closing the editor.  I'm installing 2019 now; we'll see what happens!