Unable to load game through Steam

I picked up Settlers through Steam a year ago and (almost) everything have worked fine. Since a patch two weeks ago I can no longer log in without some workaround. Loading the game through Steam greets me with an error message saying that my Java is out of date and recommend me to play the game using Google Chrome.

With some digging I found a workaround that makes me log in. In order to fix it I had to;

• Go to the settlers folder in your steam library (..\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\The Settlers Online)
• create a folder called plugins
• copy your chrome flash .dll file (pepflashplayer.dll) into the plugins folder
• edit your package.json file located in your Settlers Online folder, add the following arguments to the sections chromium-args
  --ppapi-flash-path='plugins\\pepflashplayer.dll' --ppapi-flash-version=23.0.0.207"

you can find your flash version by opening chrome and typing about:plugins in the adress bar

If I want to play I have to edit the package.json file or I just get the error message, the patcher downloads a new version of the file when the game starts so I have to redo it every time.

Can we please get some kind of permanent sollution to this issue please?