If it helps, downloading the game via the itch.io launcher probably skips over that. Speaking of, I'm not sure if my install is also uh.. bad for the same reason; I'm just starting my investigation now but it seems to not want to display images. (Also on Linux.)
Quick edit: It seems to only like it if I run the game directly from the downloads folder, doesn't matter if it's in the home folder, manually downloaded, or elsewhere, so long as it's in the downloads folder. (For whatever reason, probably Linux/permissions related.) But to that extent, I can have it in a subfolder of the downloads otherwise.