GNOME doesn't really care about shortcuts on the actual desktop, but you could put those gamename.desktop shortcuts Steam created into ~/.local/share/applications instead, and then they will appear alongside your Applications in GNOME.

~ represents your home directory, basically an alias for /home/username/ so you wouldn't have to type that in a terminal all the time. .local/ is a hidden folder (that's what the dot at the start does) and you might need to check if your file browser is showing hidden files and folders to see it.

To get more in-depth help in the future, you should probably state what Linux distro (Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch...) you are using too, different distros can have different ways of doing things!

I don't know but you can just hit the windows key and start typing the name of the game. :)

Gnome doesn't really encourage the use of icons on desktops...it's an old way of starting programs and not really needed.

Don’t know if it’s the answer you are looking for but if when you install the game you click add application menu shortcut it will add it to the menu that opens with windows key. I have never personally used desktop shortcuts on gnome since it isn’t included stock.

@Simplesyrup
Gnome by default does not allow this. You need a gnome extension like this https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1465/desktop-icons/ to do so.

Did this get sorted?

@Simplesyrup Steam client?