yeah I tried that multiple times lol
steam support got back to me! they said they removed the “low violence flag” from my copy of the game. I guess there’s some sort of server-side enforcement where it encodes something in the executable before you download it? super weird. anyway I had to uninstall and then delete the game’s folder and then reinstall it but it works now!
except for some reason the crates shatter into glass when you break them lol