SOLUTION FOUND:
Completely uninstalled Steam via:
sudo apt purge steam
then manually deleted all folders involved with steam:
sudo rm -rv ~/.steam*
sudo rm -rv ~/steam
then removed all associated libraries:
sudo apt autoremove -y
then restarted my system and reinstalled steam:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install steam
and DO NOT ENABLE PROTON/STEAMPLAY, as it seems to have been the problem. I'm going to submit a bug report to the steamplay/proton github once I've verified that it is the issue.
