@atmozphera
(EDIT : Aha, a bit too late I see, You already figured it out)
Hope it's helpful, I did a small test for you using this small gamelist (/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600/gamelist.xml ) :
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gameList>
<game>
<path>./Aardvark (2019).zip</path>
<name>Aardvark (2019)</name>
<image>./downloaded_images/Aardvark (2019).png</image>
<genre>Atari 2600</genre>
</game>
</gameList>
The files are structured like this :
pi@raspberrypi:~/RetroPie/roms/atari2600 $ find -name "*"
.
./gamelist.xml
./Aardvark (2019).zip
./downloaded_images
./downloaded_images/Aardvark (2019).png
You will see that it has a space in the name, but that doesn't matter, it just works.
2021-08-10-215402_800x600_scrot.png