Just checked the steam discussions and it seems a bug was introduced somewhere in between that makes the game crash when a transmission message is opened in game due to a bug with the interaction between game and steam.

A workaround is to just play through the game with Steam shut down completely, which works fine. The downside is that after collecting any Message from Home, that save file will be unplayable if you run the game from Steam - the game will always hang at startup. But, it will update your achievements first!