If you try running the game without that aforementioned launch option, you'll be greeted face to face with the following error:

Failed to initialize Direct3D.
Make sure you have at least DirectX 9.0c installed, have drivers for your
graphics card and have not disabled 3D acceleration
in display settings.
InitializeEngineGraphics failed

Direct3D problems are always in some form related to wineD3D missing, so the solution was straightforward.