Japanese game titles and katakana: how to name your game for Japan

When developers start localizing a Steam page into Japanese, the title is often the first question and the last decision. Do you keep the English name? Write it in katakana? Come up with something new?

There is no single right answer. But there are a few facts about how Steam handles names, a few patterns you can see on real store pages, and a handful of katakana mistakes that are easy to avoid once you know them.

What Steam does with a localized name

Valve's Localization and Languages documentation explains how localized names work:

• In the Steamworks settings for your app, you can enter a localized name for each language.
• Players who run Steam in that language see the localized name.
• A localized name set in Steamworks overrides the name in the store page section, so the store page and the player's library show the same name.
• The localized name is used for search suggestions for players in that language, and the base (non-localized) name is still used as a fallback.

The last point is the practical one. If a Japanese player hears about your game on a stream and types the name in katakana, a katakana localized name gives Steam something to match. Players who type the English name can still find you through the fallback.

Valve also notes that localizing your game's name is subject to the same limitations as changing your game's name, so read the linked "Changing Your Game's Name" page before you commit.

Four patterns on real Japanese store pages

I looked at how a set of well-known games appear on the Japanese Steam store, using the Steam store API with the language set to Japanese. Their choices fall into four patterns. (Retrieved October 17, 2026. Names can change.)

1. Keep the Latin title

This is the most common choice among the indie games I checked. Hades, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Balatro, Brotato, Cult of the Lamb, Vampire Survivors and Stardew Valley all keep their Latin-alphabet title on the Japanese store, even though they support Japanese in-game.

This works because many Japanese players read short English titles comfortably, especially when the words are common or the title is a made-up word that is meant to be read as a name.

2. Keep the Latin title, add katakana

Unpacking appears on the Japanese store as Unpacking アンパッキング. The English logo stays recognizable, and the katakana tells players how to say it and gives them something to type.

3. Switch fully to katakana

DAVE THE DIVER appears on the Japanese store as デイヴ・ザ・ダイバー. Every word is transcribed, and the middle dots (・) separate them.

4. Use a different title

Resident Evil 4 appears as BIOHAZARD RE:4. That reflects a long-standing Japanese brand name for the series, not a translation choice an indie studio would usually face. I mention it only to show that Steam fully supports a completely different title per language.

A fifth option: katakana in the text only

Some games keep the Latin title as the official name but use katakana inside the Japanese description. The Japanese short description of Stardew Valley begins with 「スターデュー バレー」で… (In "Stardew Valley"…). The store name stays in English, but Japanese readers see how it is pronounced in the very first line.

How to choose

Here is how I would think about it. These are rules of thumb, not fixed rules.

Keep the Latin title if:

• the title is short and uses common English words (Hollow Knight, Celeste);
• the title is a coined word that players will treat as a name anyway (Balatro, Brotato);
• your logo carries a lot of the brand and you want it to look the same everywhere.

Add katakana if:

• the pronunciation is not obvious from the spelling;
• you expect word of mouth through streams and videos, where people say the name before they type it;
• the title is long or uses less common English words.

Consider a new Japanese title if:

• the English title depends on a pun or idiom that disappears in Japanese;
• the English title sounds like something unintended in Japanese;
• you are working with a Japanese publisher who has a strong view on the market.

Katakana traps to avoid

Katakana is a sound-based script. Turning an English title into katakana means choosing how it should sound to Japanese ears, and there are often several defensible spellings. These are the points that cause the most trouble.

The titles below are made up for illustration.

Long vowels: ー or not?

English words that end in "-er," "-or" or "-ar" usually get a long vowel mark (ー) in katakana: keeper → キーパー, diver → ダイバー. Leaving it out changes how the word sounds and can look like a typo.

• Tide Mender → タイドメンダー (natural) / タイドメンダ (looks unfinished)

Small ッ for doubled consonants

A short pause before a consonant is written with a small ッ: pocket → ポケット, rocket → ロケット. Miss it and the word reads differently.

V: ヴ or バ?

Japanese has two common ways to write the "v" sound. DAVE THE DIVER uses デイヴ for "Dave" but ダイバー for "diver" in the same title. Both forms are normal in Japanese. What matters is choosing one deliberately and using it the same way in the title, the description, your social posts and your press kit.

Word breaks: space, ・ or nothing

Japanese does not normally put spaces between words. For multi-word katakana titles you have three options:

• no separator: タイドメンダー
• middle dot: タイド・メンダー (like デイヴ・ザ・ダイバー)
• a space: タイド メンダー (like スターデュー バレー)

All three appear on real pages. Pick one and keep it consistent. Players will search for the version they saw first.

"The," "of" and other small words

Small words become katakana too (the → ザ, of → オブ), and they make titles longer. A title like Legend of the Hollow Tide can turn into レジェンド・オブ・ザ・ホロウ・タイド, which is long and hard to scan in a store grid. In that case, keeping the Latin title, or adding a short Japanese subtitle in the description, may be easier to read.

Puns and wordplay

Wordplay usually does not survive katakana. If your title is a pun, the katakana version will only carry the sound, not the joke. Inscryption is a good example of how the description, not the title, handles this. The English short description says the secrets are "inscrybed" upon the cards. The Japanese version keeps the title in Latin letters and says that far darker secrets are carved into the cards (カードたちにはそれよりも遥かに暗い秘密が刻まれている). 刻まれている keeps the meaning of "inscribed," but the pun on the title is gone, and that is a perfectly reasonable trade.

Brackets in running text

When you mention your title inside Japanese text, the convention is to wrap it in Japanese quotation brackets. Real store pages use both styles:

• 『 』 (double brackets) — for example 『Inscryption』, 『Vampire Survivors』, 『Cuphead』
• 「 」 (single brackets) — for example 「DREDGE」, 「デイヴ・ザ・ダイバー」

『 』 is the traditional choice for titles of works. Either is understood. Just be consistent.

Make the name the same everywhere

Once you choose a Japanese name, it needs to appear the same way in every place a Japanese player might find you:

• the localized name in Steamworks (which also feeds search suggestions);
• the first line of your Japanese short description;
• your Japanese press release and fact table (for example タイトル：Tide Mender（タイドメンダー）);
• your social posts and trailer captions;
• any text inside screenshots or capsule art.

Valve notes in its store page description guidelines that any text inside images also has to be translated and re-uploaded when you localize, so a logo with a tagline baked in creates extra work.

A quick decision checklist

• ☐ Can a Japanese player read the English title out loud with confidence?
• ☐ Does the title depend on a pun or idiom?
• ☐ Is there an obvious katakana spelling, or several competing ones?
• ☐ Have you chosen one separator style (none, ・ or space)?
• ☐ Have you chosen ヴ or バ for any "v" sound?
• ☐ Does the katakana version fit comfortably in a store capsule?
• ☐ Will the same name appear in Steamworks, the description, the press kit and social posts?

Trademark and legal questions are outside the scope of this article. If a new Japanese title matters to your business, check it separately.

Get the title and the page right together

The name is only the first line of your Japanese store page. The short description, the long description and the feature list all need to use it the same way and sound natural to Japanese players.

JapanOps offers a fixed-price Japanese Steam Store Page Pack for US$99: up to 1,000 English source words of store copy turned into natural Japanese, one revision included. If you are unsure whether to keep your English title or add katakana, the pack includes a suggested katakana name and a short note on whether to use it.

See what the US$99 Steam Pack includes →

Kohey Nishi is a native Japanese speaker based in Japan and runs JapanOps. Store names and descriptions were retrieved from the Steam store with the Japanese language setting on October 17, 2026, and may have changed since.