Profile name -vs- user name & leaderboards

[MikeFulton]

I just discovered something that seemed like it might not be common knowledge so I thought I'd share.

When you sign up for Steam, it gives you an account name which is basically a series of random characters intended to be unique. This is how Steam identifies your account, so even if you're the 1546th "John Smith" your actual account name will still be unique.

You also get to select a profile name, which is what you use to login with, and which is used in a variety of other places where you want a more human-readable name.

When I originally signed up for this Steam account, I set my profile name as "mfulton" which is my first initial and last name. I'll admit that very little thought went into that. It was basically just the most common paradigm for usernames, second only maybe to firstname last initial (like "mikef").

In recent years, more and more I've run into situations where I was signing up for an account somewhere and discovered that my usual "mfulton" was already in use, so I had to select something different. This isn't really a big problem, since most places use email addresses these days instead of simple usernames, as email addresses are more likely to be unique. If they let you select a display name, I usually go with first-last: MikeFulton.

Today, I decided to change my Steam profile name to "MikeFulton" to be more consistent with what I do on other services. It was easy and seemed to be working okay. I went into the forum and looked at a few recent posts I'd made, and the new name showed up fine.

Then I decided to jump into FX and play a few tables. I had an okay game on Black Knight 2000, but far from my best, and I noticed that it was showing it as a certain position in the leaderboard.

It seems the FX leaderboard uses your PROFILE name, which means it can have multiple entries for the same user, if they change their profile name, and also that it shows the best score for each profile name they have used, not the user's best score overall. I suspect hat's not what Zen intended.

In other words, if you get the 942nd best score on the leader board while your profile name is "PnballStud" then change your profile name to "PinballKing" and get the 2341st best score, You'll take up 2 spots in the list and it will only show you the one that matches your current profile name.

It should use your actual account name, which never changes, to secure your position in the list, and simply display your profile name, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

[Jambon Emmental]

Interesting. So if someone very talented wanted to show off they could try to take all top 10 places in the leaderboard?

[MikeFulton]

Originally posted by Jambon Emmental:

Interesting. So if someone very talented wanted to show off they could try to take all top 10 places in the leaderboard?

I think I'd actually like to see someone do that, but how would anyone know if they had to use 10 different profile names?

[MikeFulton]

Originally posted by element109:

I have not tried to confirm what you have stated here but they should be using your SteamID (that is the number at the end of the url on your profile page). If you are playing on a console those have similar ID numbers.

I'll admit I didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure it out, so I may have gotten some of the finer points wrong. I'm about to jump into some other games and see it works there.

[MikeFulton]

I loaded up Asteroids Recharged and confirmed that my spot on the global leaderboard was still there. It was, and with the updated profile name.

So, it's definitely possible to do it right.