A couple of months ago, I wrote an editorial begging Sony to let us change our PSN names. The PlayStation Network launched in 2006 alongside PlayStation 3, and there's no way to change your name short of creating a new account, therefore losing all of your purchases, Trophies, friends, and more. (Sony has been known to manually change select users' names for various reasons, though you'll lose your Trophies if this happens.)

I brought this topic up in an interview with Sony Computer Entertainment America's President and CEO Shawn Layden. After all, changing PSN names is one of the single most-asked about features not yet on the Network. His answer surprised me, since he seemed to indicate that technical issues may not be standing in the way, as previously assumed by myself and others.

"The road map for feature extension is very long. It goes from here to Hangzhou in China," Layden remarked when I asked about not only changing one's PSN name, but about other oft-requested features like deleting unwanted Trophies. "And all of those things are on there. Yeah, we want to give you more control across your experience and your profile and your presence on the network."

"At the same time, as you'll understand, we don't want to make it so that you can go in, grief a bunch of people in Far Cry, change your avatar, change your username, go into CoD and grief everybody over there. We want to stop that.""The road map for feature extension is very long. It goes from here to Hangzhou in China," Layden remarked when I asked about not only changing one's PSN name, but about other oft-requested features like deleting unwanted Trophies. "And all of those things are on there. Yeah, we want to give you more control across your experience and your profile and your presence on the network."

When I asked if that issue specifically -- the risk of abuse -- is what's holding up the feature being implemented, Layden answered in the affirmative. Transparency in changing your name seems to be the issue at hand.

"[We want to do name changing] in a way that's transparent, but also don't let people morph themselves, either. And yeah, it's terrible that you have to make decisions on a service sometimes by optimizing around the bad actor. I hate that we have to do that. So we're trying to balance that between… the 99 percent of users going to have a good experience, how can we help make that happen without giving one more tool to the bad actor to go in and ruin the experience for others?"

Here's hoping Sony figures out this issue so that the many PlayStation Network users waiting to change their names -- to pay for the right to do so, even -- can get what they've been waiting for, many of them for years on end.

We'll have more from our interview with Sony's Shawn Layden soon (and you can also see an article we posted earlier today discussing PS4's meteoric sales trajectory). 

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2014/11/14/heres-why-you-cant-change-your-psn-name-yet

Easiest way is to not pick names like HerpDerpKid353866 to begin with

Hmm... Well... I forgot how far you can go in terms of changing things (since I was banned from psn quite a while ago) but the way I would do is how Steam does it! You have a Display name and then you have a username. You use your username to login which is attached to your account and then use ur display name for public viewing/games which you can change anytime with anything. So, if you do something ban worthy, the people can just report your account and it doesn't matter what your Display name is cause ur account is the one that will get reported. So I mean, why not just do it that way? (If it hasn't already been implemented that is)

Just charge money for it, like MS does. That will deter people who want to change it for the reasons the CEO exposes above, but there's always the choice to do so.

Do a 1 change per year limit and all the "excuses" I mean problems are solved.

But it might be in the way of a "purchase new ID" plan for later so not happening.


I mean everyone that has an idea how MMOs etc work knows that if you flag a person not only the name/gamertag is listed also a unique account ID. (If one has played GuildWars2 one knows that this kind of thing exists. Your unique ID in GW2 is like JohnDoe4912)

So if you can report a person its completely irrelevant if the Gamertag changes every minute or not since the unique ID does not.


So they are either completely incompetent and just forgot about that kind of ID or they just dont give a fuck and see no reason to implement this feature because cost-benefit ratio is not in their favor.

Just ask money for it (about $5) and give 1 opportunity a month.

That's a bad reason. Just sayin'.

They want to stop something that isn't happening at all?

Its not hapenning on "PSN" per say cause they don't let you change your user names. But its easy to see stuff like that happen on other online communities. You don't actually have to go in and screw up first to learn a lesson you already know.

OT: Just charge $10/$20 per name change and limit the changes to once per year. Problem solved.

They forget that Microsoft used name changing to their advantage by charging people 800 MS points to make the change. Yeah, it's still open to griefers, but I sincerely doubt there are many people willing to spend 10 bucks every time they want to piss someone off in a video game.

I think Sony's missing a golden opportunity. Charge like $5 for people to change their name, and 1) they'll be making millions just off the many casuals who constantly change their name because they really don't care about a single profile ID, and 2) it'll keep the PSN a lot less choked up with people who go out of their way to make new accounts, and they begin the process of deleting all those unused ghost accounts noone cares about.