In an anonymously-sourced Kotaku article, four game developers have come forward to shed light on an upcoming PlayStation feature: changing your PSN username.
The article states that several developers are anticipating bugs and QA-ing their compatibility with this new feature. The fourth anonymous source was able to relay internal Sony documentation listing a PSN feature for “edit username”.
The ability to change usernames is one of the most requested features in PlayStation history. Since the PS3 days, players have clamored for this feature. Online gaming has existed since the early 2000’s. Many of us have grown up, and in 2018 it seems we’ve collectively grown past our “xX420blazereaperXx” gamertag days. The embarrassment of saying your username aloud to new friends has reached peak highs, and then some.
But we’ve long theorized that Sony never hard-wired usernames to be swappable in their infrastructure. At the 2015 Paris Games Week, Sony Interactive Entertainment President Shuhei Yoshida went on record to say that “we don’t even know if we can ever [let usernames be changed]. Hopefully we will be able to provide that feature in the future.”
Whether that means the PSN system had to be reworked from the ground up or not, that hasn’t stopped Reddit users from simply not caring. But if these reports are true, we’ll be able to move past our cringey pasts.
Goodbye, “naruto_hokagekiller69”. We won’t miss you.