I *JUST* purchased the game off steam not even an hour ago, and tried running it. As soon as i double click the icon, an outline of the launch window comes up, and all i hear is the generic windows error sound getting spammed a few hundred times in rapid succession, the window flips over to (not responding) and eventually i get an error message saying EXCEPTION_STACK_OVERFLOW. I've reinstalled the game twice now. So, any ideas on a fix for this? Otherwise, i want my money back.

Have you read this topic, in particular this post?

Also, go into your Add/Remove Programs control panel and look for OpenAL drivers. If you see any, remove them.

If there is a conflict with your audio hardware and any OpenAL drivers, the launcher will crash.

Well, i read those topics, i also knew about the OpenAL issue as it's right in the PDF file that comes with it. I DID have the OpenAL stuff, but that ended up not being the issue, that was one of the first things i removed, nor was it firewall, Anitvirus, D3D, or ATI tools. After a few hours of trial and error last night, turned out to be my realtek digital output. After disabling that, restarting, i was able to start the launcher, the audio driver was set to null for some reason, so i set it to DirectSound, and then was able to turn everything that i turned off back on, and now it works fine. Not really sure WHY that was the problem, but whatever, it works now.