Checking winter challenges causes game to crash

[SwanConnor]

Anytime I open the winter challenges it instantly causes my game to crash.

what could have caused this:
when opening the game for the first time since the update I ended up pressing the "CANCEL" / "STOP" button that replaces the "PLAY" button on steam as well as turning off my VPN while it was canceling.

other than that I did not do anything unique before encountering this issue, and all other lobby area functions seem to work properly.

The issue persists beyond restarting my computer (IDK about reinstalling I'm checking that right now and will update if it fixes it)

 

[SwanConnor]

Just saw a Different thread that said validating game files fixed it, did that as well as removing my mods and that seemed to fix it

 

[SwanConnor]

After 20 min of removing + re-adding mods I found that Miku Bebop ( pak50_dir.vpk ) was the mod causing the issue for me, did not have this issue with all skins, just this one.