If you launch steam from a terminal, does it provide a hint as to what failed?
Alright. Well I'm a dirty liar I guess. I went to try it and the first time didn't work but then every other attempt worked just fine.
Only thing I can think of that changed is I recently added ewmh hinting to my xmonad config. http://xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/xmonad-contrib/XMonad-Hooks-EwmhDesktops.html
Dudes, close your issues if you are done D:
I experienced this as well, adding ewmh solved this for me.
Nothing extracted yet.
It begins and disappears immediately as if it failed with no feedback.