Sims 4 (STEAM, ARCH LINUX) Launches But "Preparing Game" Won't Go Away

I'm making this post for my boyfriend as I recently switched him over to Linux and his Sims seems to no longer work properly. The game launches and "runs" perfectly, but it's not playable seeing as there is a gigantic "steam_app_1182480" popup that takes place of the preparing game loading bar and won't disappear if the sims is opened. The desktop and other apps are accessible just fine, but opening the Sims WILL cause this screen to be overlaid making the game unplayable.

Solutions I've already tried including forcekilling the EABackgroundService process, verifying game files, deleting the proton prefix and then reverifying game files, rebooting in between each solution, rebooting as a solution. Everybody else seems to have an issue with either the game not launching, or being frozen; nobody seems to have the same issue of having a perfectly functional but unplayable game. 

UNMODDED GAME, TRIED COMPLETELY FRESH INSTALL