It is absolutely tied to steam. When this happens there is a long pause while the launcher loads and it is performing what I am assuming a version check/checking to see if the account is linked to steam
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after several seconds you will finally get the technical issue has occurred. I am currently experiencing the problem and I have tested logging in on two different computers, one that was working just fine when I logged out last night and another which I haven't used for the game for a week or so.

In both cases this failure occurs. it is not installation specific.