Hello and sorry about the issue!
Please try running Steam as Administrator, or if you are running the itch version, please make sure your anti-virus hasn't delete steamapi.dll.
We still use that library in the itch build, even though steam is not required. The DLL is though. I've heard of companies like Norton deleting it, so that's what I'm hoping might be going on.
Let me know if that helps or if you were otherwise able to solve the issue!
-Cheers