Steam does not create desktop files with CJK characters

steamopen Steam clientlocalization

ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#11229 · opened 2024-09-03 by BakaJzon · updated 2026-04-10 · 2 comments · github

BBakaJzon 2024-09-03 github

Your system information

Steam client version (build number or date): 1724878532
Distribution: Arch Linux
Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
Steam Logs: steam-logs.tar.gz
GPU: Nvidia

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

In CJK environments (specifically tested with Simplified Chinese), games containing CJK characters (in my case, Chinese characters) do not display desktop shortcuts in the KDE desktop menu when created through Steam. Upon inspection, the corresponding shortcut is created in ~/.local/share/applications, but the name is empty, resulting in a hidden file (starting with a dot) being created as .desktop.
screenshot of dolphin

I believe this issue is unrelated to the distribution or hardware configuration and is instead a problem with the Steam client logic.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

Set up Steam in a Chinese environment and configure Steam to use Chinese (other CJK languages might also work).
Download a game in the corresponding language (like 《黑神话：悟空》or Black Myth: Wukong, also the benchmark tool) and attempt to create a shortcut.
Check ~/.local/share/applications, where a .desktop file is created, with its content pointing to the corresponding game.
Then, you might rename this desktop file manually, but that's annoying.

Ccyxmon 2025-04-02 github

Same problem reproduced on Steam Deck. Really annoying, have to manually set up every shortcut for game names containing CJK characters.

SSnooober 2026-04-10 github

It also won't create shortcuts for games with colon symbol in the desktop file filename.

(Some games avoid this issue by leaving out the colon in the resulting filename such as "Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition").

Nothing extracted yet.