My question is similar to but a little different from this one: Bioshock on Steam Hangs on Startup
I couldn't find anything in the steam / bioshock forums or troubleshooting manuals about this… Neither could I find any log files that Bioshock 2 generates.
I recently got Bioshock 2 via Steam. When starting it from within Steam, the only thing I see is the launcher and the game binary appearing and (about 30s later) disappearing again in Process Explorer.
The strange thing is, that I can start Bioshock 2 from Windows 7's Start menu.
I tried around with admin priviliges, to no avail.
Using Steam's function to Verify the integrity of the game files was a mistake. It apparently restored the files that were updated when installing the patch that was forced on me by the Games For Windows Live framework that Bioshock 2 appears to be glued to. I'm currently trying to recover from this by removing and completely re-downloading the game from steam.
My system is a 64bit Windows 7.
Best Answer
Apparently, the Steam Community feature conflicts with Microsoft's Games For Windows Live in-game overlay.
I disabled it and it worked.