POE2 taking 4 minutes to launch from steam, crashing multiple times.

Following the request from one of the mods on the poe discord server, i want to report the following problem ive encountered with the game when it launches from steam:

these problems started occuring somewhen during 0.3
-when i click on the button on the desktop that launches the game, the launch progress takes an unusual amount of time, sometimes up to 4 minutes
-steam will pop up with a notif that says the application is already running when its actually not (not open yet, i can see data traffic going in and out on my SSD and my network)
-the game will go through atleast 1 program crash while trying to load to the login screen, (even when i dont click or interact with the game the crash will still happen, the task manager shows the program as unresponsive) the crashes are followed by the message that the exe stopped working, with the screen whiting out and then GGGs crash prevention kicks in and gets the game to load again.

All other games or programs on PC are issue-free, only POE2 is causing massive problems with crashes during the launch and play cycles.

Specs:
GPU: Nvidia RTX 3060
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600
MOBO: Gigabyte B650M gaming X AX
Storage: Samsung SSD 980 1TB