Paid Steam Username Change

[Pluck The Dragon]

I wanted to suggesting a new feature on Steam because I'm bored with my old username. My old username sounds like I was a 2000s gamer kid.

How Does It Works?
You can change Steam username by finding in Account > Account Details.

Is There A Limit For Changing Username?
Once per year.

How Does It Costs For Changing Username?
Approximately $4.99 or $5.99 (depending on the country you live in)

Does It Affect our Display Name?
No. You can freely change your display name any time you want.

I hope for the next Steam Update will coming up soon.

[Zefar]

Been asked for a long time. The username is just hard linked to a lot of things and if people where to start changing it and losing their account it'd be a nightmare for them.

Your username isn't shown to anyone but you so that shouldn't be an issue.

Edit: Oh and there is a difference between the name you use to login and the name you have displayed. The displayed name can be changed at any given time.

[Fluffy BUNNY]

The only part of this I'm opposed to is the paid part. Also this may increase user account security, as you sigh in with, username and password. may not be THAT important for someone with 1 or 2 $20 games. But for a user like me who has over 100 games it would be.

[cinedine]

Queue in all the wonderful informed people that will tell you it is impossible to do so (it isn't).
Then queue in some more informed people telling you that it'S too much work (it might be).
Then queue in all the helpful people telling you "something something valve time" (not relevant).

But why would you put something that can be seen as a security feature behind a paywall? Back in the days when Steam started the username was an email adress and therefore more-or-less public information. And IIRC Steam even exposed it when gitfting to an account.
People should be able to overwrite this without any additional costs.

[Gwarsbane]

Originally posted by Emerstta:

I wanted to suggesting a new feature on Steam because I'm bored with my old username. My old username sounds like I was a 2000s gamer kid.

How Does It Works?
You can change Steam username by finding in Account > Account Details.

Is There A Limit For Changing Username?
Once per year.

How Does It Costs For Changing Username?
Approximately $4.99 or $5.99 (depending on the country you live in)

Does It Affect our Display Name?
No. You can freely change your display name any time you want.

I hope for the next Steam Update will coming up soon.

Or you could use the search feature and discover that this has been discussed to death and you could read all those threads on why its not going to happen.

Short version, Valve isn't being mean by not letting people change their login names, they are not looking to make money from it, they screwed up when making the database and too many things are tied into it now as mentioned and by changing it they could really screw things up so badly that everyone loses access to their accounts.

Don't give your login name to anyone. No one needs to see it. No legit site needs it to log in.

[Nx Machina]

https://web.archive.org/web/20170526211558/http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=26088889

@ cinedine

And what did Valve say about your solution?

As a sidenote: Sony did for PS4 and it messed with trophies (Bloodborne as an example) plus it totally screwed up PS3 and PS Vita trophies in fact they did not exist. How do i know? I beta tested it as i own all three systems. I reverted the change and i am positive you see the importance of reverting because you do like your achievements.

[Mad Scientist]

If they did this, chances are it would be free but you could only do so a limited number of times with a cooldown or just once, they're not EA afterall. Though this if ever done, should require proof of account ownership to even consider.

On their end they could store previous usernames and make them unavailable so it's referenced only for the original and current user.

Don't really believe they'll do so, given how many years this appears to have been suggested for.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by cinedine:

Queue in all the wonderful informed people that will tell you it is impossible to do so (it isn't).
Then queue in some more informed people telling you that it'S too much work (it might be).
Then queue in all the helpful people telling you "something something valve time" (not relevant).

The real picture is probably the dullest of all. There's probably decades of technical debt buried within the storefront backend and DDBB setup. Enough to turn the feature into a kind of 'nobody wants to deal with that crap' task. And without a powerful bonus business-wise it turns into the task that's eternally delayed.

[Federal]

Also i think if that option available adding some terms could be helpful such as this suggestions:

A) adding a time period between every request
example: you can change your username after 90 days.

^ = Free Service And Available to use after 90 days =

__

B) make it paid service, also adding with that service a time period between every request

example: you can change your username when you successfully paid the fees , plus adding a time period when the user wanted to change his username in short time with the service fees

^ = $ + Cooldown =


"P.S" in the suggestion (B),
the reason why i suggested the user should wait some time after making another request to change the username is to prevent spamming or abuse the service

[nullable]

Originally posted by Emerstta:

I wanted to suggesting a new feature on Steam because I'm bored with my old username. My old username sounds like I was a 2000s gamer kid.

How Does It Works?
You can change Steam username by finding in Account > Account Details.

Is There A Limit For Changing Username?
Once per year.

How Does It Costs For Changing Username?
Approximately $4.99 or $5.99 (depending on the country you live in)

Does It Affect our Display Name?
No. You can freely change your display name any time you want.

I hope for the next Steam Update will coming up soon.

1. Does an arbitrary limit make you feel like it's a more reasonable request?
   
2. Does paying for it make it seem like such a cash cow Valve would want to do it? It certainly would piss a lot of people off. $5 to change your name? What is this a crappy MMO?

I hope you don't expect your idea to be implemented in the next update...

[Pierce Dalton]

I'd like to change mine too, if that was possible, but I'm not even slightly bothered by it. Honestly, I hope the dev team uses their time for more important stuff.

[[?]legit]

Originally posted by Snakub Plissken:

• Does paying for it make it seem like such a cash cow Valve would want to do it? It certainly would piss a lot of people off. $5 to change your name? What is this a crappy MMO?

[/olist]

Sony, Microsoft and Blizzard all charge a small fee for changing the account's name. What makes you think that they're a crappy MMO?

[Elendil]

interesting topic

[nullable]

Originally posted by legit:

Originally posted by Snakub Plissken:

• Does paying for it make it seem like such a cash cow Valve would want to do it? It certainly would piss a lot of people off. $5 to change your name? What is this a crappy MMO?

[/olist]

Sony, Microsoft and Blizzard all charge a small fee for changing the account's name. What makes you think that they're a crappy MMO?

Touche, the last time such a thing was visible to me was when Blizzard added it to WoW.

[Nostalginaut]

Originally posted by Zefar:

Your username isn't shown to anyone but you so that shouldn't be an issue.

It's shown to anyone with (even brief!) access to the same computer as you, and for those of us who made our Steam accounts ~19 years ago (thankfully(?) this is a new account, but it's already presented issues for me, personally), it can at the very least be a little embarrassing, or (as is the case with me), enable stalking and doxxing.

Sony caved and enabled it after so many years. Why not Valve?

[nullable]

Valve has been unwilling and uninterested in the concept so far. But I expect they can't run on their original system design forever, or ignore common features on other platforms indefinitely either.