Video games are prone to errors. It is part of life as a gamer. Thankfully, many of them can be fixed quite easily. If you have been hit with the “error reading pak file” error while trying to play Apex Legends, then you have run into a pretty common problem.
The good news that there is an easy solution that you can use to fix the problem. The cause of the problem is a corrupted file that fails to read properly when the program is trying to load it. Now, in an ideal world, it will be straightforward to fix this issue, but it could potentially hint at a deeper issue that we will run through at the end of the article.
The first thing to notice is that the error message will be giving you the full file path to the pak file that cannot be read. Follow this and either delete or rename the pak file. Now, run the game and it should auto-update, repairing the file as it does.
The second method is to go into Steam or Origin and verify/fix the game files. On Steam, right-click on Apex Legends in your library, then select Properties, Local Files, and Verify Integrity of Games Files.
On Origin, find the gear icon next to the Play button in the bottom right corner and click on it. From there, click on the Repair option. These will cause the game to automatically check all installed files and repair any that have problems.
Where things could get a bit sticker is if the storage device the file is on is actually corrupted. Files can corrupt due to bad writes, or due to being stored on bad drives. If it’s the latter, you will need to move the entire game installation to a new storage device to see if that resolves the problem.
