Dead Space Remake Won't Launch

In my case it was a case of a missing dll file, specifically

MFPLAT.DLL

It's possible to verify if it's also the cause of problems for you by running Dead Space.exe from a command line (cmd.exe). It will immediately spit out this missing file error, a tiny window that seemingly gets suppressed when starting via Steam. Getting to that exe in cmd.exe is a bit complicated if you have never done that before, but it's doable.

Anyway, here's the link to the missing DLL, but make sure you download the 64 bit version of that dll ("Architecture 64" on that page) and put it into the game's main folder (you can use Steam to "Browse game files" and that will open the necessary folder): https://www.dll-files.com/mfplat.dll.html

And as a bonus, for those who can't start Dead Space 2023 in Linux via Steam, all you have to do is go to the game's properties in Steam and select a different version of Proton. I tried Proton version 7 and it started up just fine, while it doesn't start on the latest version at all, similar to Windows. You don't need to download any dlls, just change that version.