Earlier this month, Sony confirmed they were finally going to let players change their PSN usernames sometime in 2019. Great news, right? Well, the long-awaited feature has hit the PlayStation Preview Program, and according to testers, PSN ID changes come with some rather scary warnings.
Several UK users on the ResetEra forums have reported getting invites to the PS4 6.10 software preview, and the emails came with the following warning about PSN ID changes:
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Important Information Before Changing your Online ID:
- Not all games and applications for PS4, PS3, PS Vita, and other PlayStation systems support the Online ID change feature. If you change your Online ID:
- You may lose access to content (including paid-for content) that you have acquired for your games, including content like add-ons and virtual currency.
- You may lose your progress within games, including game saved data, leaderboard data and progress toward trophies.
- Parts of your games and applications might not function properly, both online and offline.
- Your previous Online ID(s) may remain visible to you and other players in some places.
Now, again, PSN ID changes are still in testing, so hopefully these issues are ironed out by the time the feature rolls out to everyone in 2019. But still, the fact that these potential issues exist at all is…worrisome. PSN profiles are linked to a username rather than a unique ID number, which makes username changes more complicated than you might think. Basically, each individual game has to be updated to support PSN ID changes, and it seems some games may not react well to them.
As announced earlier this month, you’ll be able to change your PSN ID once for free, but beyond that changes will cost $10. PS Plus subscribers will only have to pay $5 for additional name changes. Once you change your ID, you can choose to also display your old username, so your friends will still know who they’re talking to.
Will you be changing your 2000s-tastic PSN ID? Or have these warnings scared you off?
