Steam games showing incorrect time

steamopen

ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#11698 · opened 2025-01-24 by BRTPOB · updated 2026-08-31 · 5 comments · github

BBRTPOB 2025-01-24 github

Your system information

Steam client version (build number or date): 1737601106
Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS
Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] Yes
Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No] Yes
Steam Logs: [generate by running this command in a terminal tar -zcvf ~/Desktop/steam-logs.tar.gz ~/.steam/steam/logs]
GPU: NVIDIA

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Games that are running through Proton such as Diablo 4 and Anno 1800 are showing the current time as being an hour ahead of where it actually is. As of the writing, the time here in Ireland is 22:48 on 24/01/25, but playing Diablo 4 or Anno 1800, the time shows as 23:48 instead. This seems to be similar to #10057, which was previously closed.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

Set timezone to GMT+0 Dublin/London
Launch a Proton-based game that shows a clock in game/shows timestamps for saves
Observe

Aalde 2025-09-05 github

Having the same issues with ingame times showing as UTC, which is 5 hours ahead of me.

~ $ sudo hwclock
2025-09-05 07:38:21.990494-04:00
~ $ timedatectl
               Local time: Fri 2025-09-05 07:40:27 EDT
           Universal time: Fri 2025-09-05 11:40:27 UTC
                 RTC time: Fri 2025-09-05 11:40:27
                Time zone: America/New_York (EDT, -0400)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no
~ $

Distribution: Fedora 42
Flatpak: Yes
Steam Beta Branch: Stable Client
Steam Version: 1751405894
Steam Client Build Date: Fri, Jun 27 21:07 UTC -05:00
Steam Web Build Date: Tue, Jul 1 17:19 UTC -05:00
Steam API Version: SteamClient022

TtheCapypara 2025-09-23 github

Can confirm this issue. Unlike #10057 the steam overlay is correct, just the time display in games is wrong. It seems that Proton has no timezone information, it seems to always use UTC.

Aalde 2025-09-24 github

I solved it by setting the following in the launch options:

TZ=EST5EDT LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 %command%

Ssolomongrundy6 2025-12-24 github

TZ=EST5EDT LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 %command%

If using the Steam flatpak, adding these as environment variables with Flatseal also seems to work.

FFrenzie 2026-08-31 github

It doesn't seem to use UTC for me but something like UTC-4.

I just saved a game at 21:59 (UTC+2) and the game says 15:59.

Launch lines

TZ=EST5EDT LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 %command%x2 2025-12