Tip of the Week: Change Game Language with Environment Variables

This Week’s Pro Tip: Use the Additional Variables field in the Decky Plugin to set language environment variables for Epic games that support multiple languages!

Note: This tip is for Decky Plugin users. Junk Store 2.0 has a built-in language menu for easier switching.

The Problem

You’re using the Decky Plugin and want to play your games in a different language. The Decky Plugin doesn’t have a built-in language menu, so you need to use environment variables to tell games which language to use.

The Solution

Use environment variables in Junk Store’s Additional Variables field to set the game language.

Important: This only works for games in your Epic library that already have your desired language built-in. Check the game’s store page on the Epic website to verify language support first.

Step-by-Step Guide

1. From the game page in Junk Store, click the ⚙️ Settings menu

   

   Click the ⚙️ Settings menu on the game page

2. Select PROTON

   

   Navigate to PROTON settings

3. Set dropdown to All

   

   Change the dropdown to All to reveal Advanced options

4. Click ADVANCED, navigate to the Additional Variables field, and enter your language variables:

   export HOST_LC_ALL=es_ES.UTF-8
   export LANG=es_ES.UTF-8
   

   

   Enter both language environment variables in the Additional Variables field

5. Press X to save changes

The game will now launch in your specified language automatically.

Example: Hogwarts Legacy in Spanish

Here’s what it looks like when you set Spanish (es_ES) for Hogwarts Legacy:

Title screen now displays in Spanish

Main menu with Spanish text

Hogwarts Letter fully translated to Spanish

Common Language Codes

Here are the most commonly used language codes. Replace es_ES in the example with your desired language:

export HOST_LC_ALL=es_ES.UTF-8
export LANG=es_ES.UTF-8

Language	Code
English	en_US
German	de_DE
French	fr_FR
Spanish	es_ES
Italian	it_IT
Japanese	ja_JP
Korean	ko_KR
Chinese (Simplified)	zh_CN
Chinese (Traditional)	zh_TW
Portuguese (Brazil)	pt_BR
Russian	ru_RU

Pro Tips

⚠️ Critical: This only works for games that already have your desired language built in. Environment variables don't add new language files, they just tell the game which existing language to use. Always check the game's store page to verify language support before trying this method.

💡 Pro Tip: Your language settings persist between game launches and updates, so you only need to set this once per game.

Hope this tip helps! Questions? Our team is always ready to help.

Cheers,
The Junk Store Team

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