If you bought the game on Steam, the official steam_api.dll (note: no hyphen) is placed in the game’s root folder. Steam automatically manages this file. You will never see an error with the official version unless your antivirus quarantines it.
Right-click your on your desktop and select Run as administrator .
Your security software mistakenly flags and quarantines the file.
: Steam may fail to write the file during a game update, resulting in a "disk write failure". Corrupted Game Files
“The code execution cannot proceed because steam-api.dll was not found.”