New information suggests that Sony might finally allow PlayStation Network users to change their usernames.
A report by Kotaku is citing “three people at three different game studios” who say that they’ve been taking technological steps to prepare for the upcoming ability for PSN users to alter their usernames. Said steps supposedly include “fixing bugs, tweaking settings, and ensuring that their games are compatible with Sony’s plans.” A fourth source went so far as to share a photo from an internal Sony document that shows an “edit username” option on a PSN profile.
If you’re wondering why it’s necessary for studios to spend so much time altering their games in order to accommodate what seems to be a simple feature… well, that’s because changing your PSN username is apparently not quite as simple as it seems to be. Some of those same sources cited in this article also claim that the way PSN usernames were originally implemented means that it actually takes quite a bit of work to accommodate the possibility of users suddenly changing them en masse (which is exactly what will happen when this actually lands). These complications are reportedly tied to the current way that PSN names are used to identify users within online games.
So far as that goes, Sony has not released an official comment regarding this rumored upcoming feature or said what, exactly, developers must do in order to prepare for these changes. There’s also no word on when this feature might be released or how the process of changing your username might work. However, we imagine it will be implemented before the impending end of the PS4.
The reason that this is such a big deal is that there are quite a few people out there who are stuck with the PSN usernames they chose way back in 2006 when the service first launched. Sony has hinted at implementing such a feature in the past, but many users are baffled as to why they haven’t been able to perform this seemingly simple function for the last 12 years.
For context, Microsoft has allowed Xbox Live users to change their usernames for years. The first change is free if it was a name you didn’t choose for yourself, but all other changes cost $8 to perform. We imagine that Sony will bring in something similar.
Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.