Long Steam Launch Times after 3.27.0d

I use Steam to launch PoE, and normally it would take 10 or less seconds to get into the login screen. Since the 3.27.0d patch, my game will sit on a black screen for over a minute before the GGG splash screen shows, every single time.

Has anyone else experienced this or have any suggestions on how to fix it?

I've tried deleting my shader cache, and have set the cache size to unlimited, with no fix. Unfortunately my hardware is too old for resizable bar, so not sure if this would help. I have an M2 SSD, and haven't made any other recent hardware changes.

Also, this is only the loading screen on launching the game, it's perfectly fine in all other loading screens. Verified Steam game files, no changes.

Looking into it a bit more, it seems that when the game launches, my RAM usage maxes out (16Gb, clean restart, no other apps open). However, it is not just PoE that is using my ram, it's a hundred little services from Steam and Windows. PoE itself is only using 2-4Gb.