I tried getting it to run via wine but eventually caved and just used my VM.
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Thank you for responding back and for the heads-up! If I figure out how to get it running "natively", I'll let you know right away. For me, Steam's Proton Experimental didn't work. I suspect that we need to override one of the .dll files using winecfg, like httpwin perhaps. It's just that I don't know which of the numerous Proton prefixes goes with this specific game
But again, if I find out, I'll reply back to you right away.