Probably something with my setup, but I've yet to figure it out. Never had this issue, at least this persistent. Turning off the Steam Overlay helped once, but that was the only time I got it to work. It just locks up it's so slow when I try to play it. Tried verifying the installation files and every version of Proton back to 6, but no luck. The one time I did get it to work, besides the overlay being turned off, I was using Proton 7 I believe. Really fun the one time I played it, but I'd like to play it more and hopefully buy it. :)