"Freelancer failed to initialize the save directory" message on startup - FLHDE/freelancer-hd-edition GitHub Wiki

If you see this message when starting Freelancer: HD Edition, it means something has gone wrong while it tried to initialize the save directory. This is often the result of Freelancer having no permission to create the initial save files. By default it first tries to do this in Documents/My Games/Freelancer. However, if it detects that it has no read and write permissions, it will instead try the SAVES folder within the directory where Freelancer: HD Edition is installed. If even in this folder it has no permission, then as a last resort it will try the same directory where Freelancer.exe is located (EXE folder in the Freelancer: HD Edition installation directory).

To resolve the problem, please make sure that Freelancer: HD Edition has permission to read and write files in your My Documents folder. This appears to be a problem on some Windows 10/11 setups that make use of OneDrive. If that doesn't help, try running Freelancer: HD Edition as an administrator. The FLSpew.txt file which you can find in %localappdata%/Freelancer (or C:/Users/Username/AppData/Local/Freelancer) may contain some logs regarding the directory it failed to access.