Steam doesn't launch unless disconnected from Internet

I’m having an interesting time running Steam. I installed Steam via Pi-Apps, and after some manual downloading of a stuck manifest, I got it to run once. I installed a couple games and got them running. On subsequent launches the Steam icon shows up in the task bar but doesn’t actually open. If I click the icon on the task bar, Steam crashes.

While I was experimenting, I managed to get it to launch and display the Steam client UI by disabling WiFi before I launch the client. When I get to the login screen, I re-enable wifi. It’s dicey because sometimes it doesn’t work. Has anyone here managed to get steam to launch correctly consistently? I know it’s slow but I was playing Stardew Valley and FTL (No sound), Fez and Baba is You.

I tried compiling Box86 and Box64 myself and manually installing Steam but I get a slew of library errors I could not figure out.

In my experience it just takes an unreasonably long time to launch. Like, 5 or 10 minutes. Mine does the same thing I get the icon in the tray it appears as if everything is and should work but it doesn’t, that is until I put it in my desk and forget about it. I also installed from the pi-apps app.

I’ve tried leaving it running for several hours and the Steam UI never pops up. I see it operating in task manager. I’ve tried alt+tabbing to see if it’s simply stuck minimized. I tried launching a game to see if that kick starts the Steam UI and the game always seems to fail to launch. Baba Is You for example. If I browse to the folder and launch it directly, it launches fine. If I use the shortcut that invokes “steam steam://rungameid/736260”, it just fails.