Final conclusion here: I'm playing on a laptop plugged into a docking station. If I start factorio plugged into the docking station, the game crashes upon startup. If I start the game not plugged into the docking station then it loads properly. If I start unplugged in the docking station, get the ga...

I changed my version back to 0.17 Experimental then verified the integrity of game files (all good) and the game was able to load normally without crashing. I didn't update windows or drivers so I'm not sure what changed.

I removed the --dxgi-blit-model parameter and went backwards through each version.

0.17.38 through 0.17.50 all crashed (all available experimental builds) but 0.16 stable didn't crash.

I've been having the same issue but using the --dxgi-blit-model method didn't fix it for me.

I can roll back to an earlier version of Factorio to get the game to start.

Thanks!