After disabling steam overlay, factorio still crashes. However, when disabling MSI Afterburner/RTSS, it loads into the main menu. is there a generally accepted reason for this? And what could I do to mitigate this in the future, other than turning them off when I want to play factorio?

I have already done these troubleshooting steps, and so far they have not worked. I.e. when verifying, all game files verify successfully, and reinstalling just ends up with the same issue.

After logging into the factorio website through steam and downloading the .zip of space age, the game loads fully when started through factorio.exe. when starting the game through steam, the game still crashes.

what would further debugging steps be, as I would like to continue using the steam ...

It seems that the demo version loads in just fine, making it to the game selection screen. However, when loading the steam install, it still hard crashes.

what are you suggesting? donwloading the demo via the webpage or buying it? Ill try the demo because its easy to do but please advise.

Currently, I am unable to open Factorio in its current state, with it hard crashing when initializing sprites (approx 65% - 75% loaded). Please see the video on what I am currently seeing. The logs, as I have read them, do not describe how the crash occurs, and only shows the latest step taken ...