Arabic on Steam العربية

That's the share of Arab players in Steam's survey. Not because we aren't here, but because Steam won't let us pick our language.

Developers choose languages from that survey, so Arabic never makes their list. Valve started adding Arabic in 2025, then stopped. We're asking them to finish it.

Petition coming soon Post on X

The whole story in one picture

Steam hides us: you can't set Steam to Arabic, so its survey counts us as 0% and developers skip Arabic, even though the Arab world is #13 in Steam downloads, yet only 7.8% of top sellers support Arabic.

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Four things we're asking Valve for

  1. Put Arabic back in the language menuand finish the translation started in 2025.
  2. Support right-to-left layoutwith a clear, readable Arabic font.
  3. Add Arabic to the Steam appso the monthly survey counts us as we are.
  4. Allow Arabic store descriptionsso studios that translate their games can reach us.

Details and sources

Every number in the images, explained and sourced.

How Arabic disappears

1 · SteamNo Arabic appWe use Steam in English because there's no other choice.
2 · The dataArabic shows 0.00%The survey counts the app's language, so we count as English speakers.
3 · The decisionStudios skip usLocalization guides tell developers to pick languages from that survey.
4 · The resultHungarian-level supportA language with over 400 million speakers is treated as a small one.

"The Steam UI itself is not currently translated into Arabic and players cannot select Arabic as one of the languages to run Steam in."

Valve, Steamworks documentation: Languages Supported on Steam

They started, then stopped

  1. A player offers to translate Steam into Arabic for free. The reply cites Valve's policy: "we currently aren't looking into adding any further languages".
  2. Arabic appears as a beta language on the Steam website. Players welcome it.
  3. Reports on Steam's forums: mixed Arabic and English text scrambled, a tiny font, untranslated menus.
  4. Arabic is gone from the language menu, which lists 29 others. No right-to-left layout, and nothing in the Steam app.

The result: Arabic sits with the smallest languages

Share of Steam's 6,387 top-selling games that support each language, from Steam's own search filters (27 Sep 2026). Every language here can be selected in the Steam app, except Arabic.

The demand is real

1.69%of all Steam downloads worldwide come from 22 Arab countries, about the same as Turkey (1.76%) and Korea (1.75%), and more than Italy (0.80%)
#1Arabic was the most-requested game language on X over three months, of eight languages measured
41%of Gulf players only play, or are more likely to play, games in Arabic (45% in Saudi Arabia)
~3×what a Saudi player spends per year compared with a player in Southeast Asia
2015the year PlayStation's store added Arabic, and big releases reach Arab players there in Arabic

Sources: Niko Partners & Saudi Esports Federation (2024); Niko Partners market models (2025); PlayStation Blog (June 2015); our study of language requests on X (June–September 2026).

Questions

Is this a campaign against Steam?

No. We use Steam and like it, and we're asking it to finish what it started. Every number here comes from Steam itself or a published source.

Why not just ask each game for Arabic?

Because developers look at Steam's data and see no Arabic speakers. As long as Arabic is missing from the Steam app, most of them won't see us.

Who's behind this?

Arab players and translators. It was started by Enma, an Arabic game translation initiative, and anyone is welcome to join.

Sources