[Split Fiction Bug] Stuck on loading screen

To preface, I play Split Fiction on steam deck. I played the game a couple of weeks ago with no issues. But today I tried playing and got to character select and invited my wife to the game, we selected our characters and hit play, then our game got stuck on the loading screen.

After restarting the game, every time I launch it now it gets stuck on the loading screen right after the opening splash screens. I have verified game files twice, reinstalled the game, tried changing my proton versions from default to experimental, and nothing has fixed it. 

As I was typing this post I was letting the game sit on the loading screen, and after about ten minutes it finally loaded to the main menu. I was curious to see if the issue was fixed so I closed the game and a window popped up that said "Fatal Error", then I re-launched the game and the splash screens played and it has now been sitting on a black screen for 5 minutes now.

I don't normally post on forums but I've tried everything I can think of to fix this issue and nothing has worked, it's very rare that my wife wants to play video games and we've been trying to get this to work for an hour and a half and I'm incredibly frustrated at this point