I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out where in the world i could select a new region so i could actually play the game because it kept asking to. i watched some tutorials which they obviously pointed out its literally "right here". However the devs thought it was so funny to remove this option but keep the error, causing new players to be confused on where to go, what to do. etc.

To answer quickly im pretty sure the game is automatically selecting regions now rather than allowing the player to select one,

the error is because the game failed to pick a valid region. To fix it:
1. restart your game.
2. check your internet connection.
3. check your region if the game is banned there or not.

if you tried everything related to your network connection theres a possibility the game itself is literally not wanting to cooperate. in that case just uninstall. the devs keep removing things out of the game and re-adding them back in causing errors and some bugs so its best to just avoid it until this gets fixed by the developers themselves or of course you can try finding other options that i didnt list, i just didnt want to waste time searching for some "go here", "do this", "edit this file" type of fix that might not even work for everyone.