Frozen game/menu after ad

I have had this issue occasionally myself, regardless of the contents of my Mods folder. People also often come into support servers claiming that this mod or that mod is causing it, that removing this mod or that mod fixed it, etc., but many have also reported later that they thought they'd found the cause, removed it, and then it happened again with the supposed cause removed. Pretty much EVERY player we have directed to try playing offline who has reported back at all has said that playing offline worked, and with the volume of people who come onto those servers for support it's also screamingly obvious that it happens exponentially more often when there are pre-menu pop-ups being pushed live from EA's servers, because that's when we see an absolutely silly volume of complaints about it; it drops off again when whatever round of pop-ups were ongoing ends, and picks back up again when a new one starts.