PLEASE let us change our Steam ID

[Kazi]

I've been gaming all my life and with that comes many changes. I have grown out of many gamertags throughout the years. I have so many games and apps which my gamertags are saved on and every time I decide to change my name I'm easily able to in EVERY SINGLE GAME/APP. But Steam. I have so many games and have put many hours on them, there's no way I will make another account and lose all of that. Every time I have to log into Steam I have to remember my actual ID and not just my username (which you actually can change, which makes it difficult because it's hard to have to remember a name which I only use for one app since all the other apps let me change it. Although nobody see's it, its annoying and sounds like such an easy thing to fix which will go a very long way. I just don't understand why it's so hard to make it a feature, I mean this is literally the most popular PC game distributer in the entire world, hundreds of millions of people use this daily, yet making a simple feature such as changing an ID is so hard? Even though every other platform lets you do so. All I'm asking is to please make this a feature, and make it so that we can log in with the name we want to see when we log in. Thanks.

[KalGimpa]

the goodd news is that only you can see that name

and that you can change the name people do see whenever you want

bad news is that the way that steam set up their system

they cannot allow username changes

at least that is the way it is told

not being a programmer/coder i do not know the details involved

[FFL2and3rocks]

Originally posted by Kazi:

I just don't understand why it's so hard to make it a feature

Because Steam was built in such a way that changing your account name will break everything else. So letting you change our account name is not a simple on/off switch they can add, they would essentially need to re-create Steam from the ground up.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Last employee to have been publicly known to have it on their to do list was MikeB and he left Valve years ago and this is what Jay (another employee that left Valve) had to say way back when...

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

There was also this bit of information about how difficult of a task it would be to rework the database to allow account name changes...

https://i.imgur.com/tFER4.png

[[N]ebsun]

Originally posted by Kazi:

I have so many games and apps which my gamertags are saved on and every time I decide to change my name I'm easily able to in EVERY SINGLE GAME/APP. But Steam.
Every time I have to log into Steam I have to remember my actual ID and not just my username (which you actually can change, which makes it difficult because it's hard to have to remember a name which I only use for one app since all the other apps let me change it. Although nobody see's it, its annoying
I just don't understand why it's so hard to make it a feature, I mean this is literally the most popular PC game distributer in the entire world, hundreds of millions of people use this daily, yet making a simple feature such as changing an ID is so hard? Even though every other platform lets you do so. All I'm asking is to please make this a feature, and make it so that we can log in with the name we want to see when we log in. Thanks.

If you could change your login name, what would prevent you from losing / forgetting your account ? you just said that it's already difficult to remember something that never changes, now imagine that it does change and you forgot...

The login username is not a gamertag - a gamer tag is what your profile publicly displays (it's what everyone else can see). Your login username is the account name. You can change your gamertag, as you have already done so in the past (it's your display name).

It's not really about how difficult it is - even with what people have posted already, there are many ways around that (easiest example would be simply adding another changeable login for the same account - thereby keeping the existing account names in tact, and aliasing a new login to the same account - something that is done in many places). This is one way that would solve the issue of forgetting the login, since the original never changes.
The main thing would be - what is the benefit for Valve to implement this.. it is a lot of work and it will likely only be used by a handful of people - there are other features that are easier and less risky to implement, which would benefit a lot more people.

[Crashed]

Hackers would love such a feature. Your login name is part of your credentials, and a hijacker changing it would take away your access to the account.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Kazi:

I Every time I have to log into Steam I have to remember my actual ID and not just my username (which you actually can change, which makes it difficult because it's hard to have to remember a name which I only use for one app since all the other apps let me change it.

Password manager. You need a password manager. Human memory is pretty faulty. And you're not going to remember every account detail for all accounts. And sometimes forgetting things can be quite a hassle, or even catastrophic. There's a saying, "the faintest ink is worth more than the sharpest memory." Which in this case is a fancy way to say, use a password manager.

You don't need to remember the details then.

The solution to your shoddy human memory isn't for Valve to change their system. it's for you to manage your accounts responsibly.

Originally posted by Kazi:

Although nobody see's it, its annoying and sounds like such an easy thing to fix which will go a very long way. I just don't understand why it's so hard to make it a feature, I mean this is literally the most popular PC game distributer in the entire world, hundreds of millions of people use this daily, yet making a simple feature such as changing an ID is so hard? Even though every other platform lets you do so. All I'm asking is to please make this a feature, and make it so that we can log in with the name we want to see when we log in. Thanks.

Lots of things sound easy, when you don't know the history of the item, or how decades of decisions impact it. The devil is in the details, and easy things to say, or not being able to imagine difficulties with the request doesn't mean there are none.

In this case the username is load bearing, so changing it is a non-trivial thing. And while one might be critical of Valve's decisions concerning the user name, that's the system that exists and users wanting it to be different just 'cuz may not be enough to warrant changes. That being said forever is a long time too and someday Valve may want to take a crack at updating and migrating data structures, so maybe then adding that feature could be in the cards.

That being said, lots of services don't let you change your user name. It's really up to the implementation the service decides to go with. Neither is wrong or right, even if you have a preference, they're just different from each other.