Theres 2 dif loading screen bugs. One before and one after you click Multiplayer.
The first one is fixed by logging out of Google Games, this stops game from using cloud, and also fixes the bug where u get asked to pick from multiple saves found.
The second one is fixed by deleting cloudcontainer.dat, its an auto-generated file, sometimes game wont load it right.
After a week of it not happening the infinite loading screen is happening again. The last time this happened I lost my main multiplayer save somehow without any way for me to recover it. Is there any kind of fix for it that doesn't involve clearing cache, turning off and on, un and reinstall? I refuse to do this grind a third time.
well if ur on Android just keep a backup of your multiplayer.dat then while ur at it also keep player.dat and cloudcontainer.dat
put them on a another device or a private discord server, or Google Drive
After u have made ur backups, i believe i already mentioned what to do above. Log OUT of Google Games. Delete Cloudcontainer.dat problem solved