Is there anyway to disable the 'starting game' popup when launching a game via the desktop shortcut?

[foo]

I'm just curious, because I notice that using steam client to directly launch the game doesn't cause the popup to show, but using a desktop shortcut does.

[Brujeira]

The only thing you can do to stop it is to start all your games from within the client. The desktop shortcuts are set up to run the Steam client first if it isn't already active. That may explain the popup as it's kind of necessary to remind you that you need to be online for pretty much everything during a Steam session.