MonoGame on a Clean Install of Windows 10 requires vcredist_x64.exe

I had to reformat my PC I was developing on and found that MonoGame wouldn’t compile on a clean machine. I installed VS 2017 Community Edition, MonoGame, and the DirectX package. The failure ended up being in the Content Pipeline, it was complaining it couldn’t find freetype6.dll. I didn’t install Visual C++ with VS, so that may also have fixed the issue. Once I installed the redistributable it worked. Not sure why that wasn’t included with Windows 10, but I won’t argue.

I used this version, probably should have got the one for 2017, but it worked anyway.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679

No need to install C++ with visual neither :wink:
After your fresh install, if you installed some games before monogame and launched them, they would have installed vcredist for you, and you wouldn’t have noticed it was required.
I agree it should be included in something like “optional updates” in Windows.