Thanks. Not the solution but it did confirm to me that it was an actual bug and not because I couldn't figure out the controls. It pushed me to search in the right direction. I tried using the separate experimental crack dlls but they crashed the game on launch, but I eventually found this as the working solution:
It seems absurd that it's off by default in the first place. Either someone somewhere somehow messed up or it's an ultra-subtle anti-piracy measure made by the devs because you can still explore the menus and see the features, but it's just that you struggle to actually properly enjoy the game lol.
Yeah, ever since the addition of Subscribestar as a subscription option, the method of cracking the dll has changed a little if you are using dnSpy (I do not know about other methods):
Now both the 'Authenticated' & the 'AllowMenuToggleOff' variables must be changed to true for the crack to be usable.
On top of that there is some new error with something something "tuple" that wont let you compile the crack, so you have to go in & delete all the code it's complaining about (it's like 3 little blocks of code, just make sure you only delete the blocks & that you delete the full block to prevent any errors) removing the code has no effect on the game so far as I know.
Otherwise the process is the same, just a couple extra steps
P.S. I believe the AllowMenuToggleOff is for the tutorial that the game is supposed to put you through, but because we are bypassing the authentication, we never hit the flag that turns the toggle on.