Ben-DutkaPlayStation Network subscribers can't change their usernames, and they can't delete Trophies.
But why? Well, SCEA president and CEO Shawn Layden was asked this very question in a recent IGN interview and he says it's not a technical issue. Rather, it's about trolling prevention.
He did say that being able to change your PSN username and the ability to delete Trophies is planned for the future. But thus far, Sony has resisted due to…well, adolescent social reasons. Said Layden:
"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."
He admitted that it's not ideal that Sony has to make a policy decision based on bad behavior in the gaming community, but it remains a reality. "I hate that we have to do that," Layden added. At the same time, they want to give people the option without having a simple experience ruined by a few "bad actors."
Bet you didn't think this was the reason, huh? Personally, I really need the option to delete Trophies. Having reviewed so many games over the years, I've got a zillion Trophies for games I don't own (and games I don't even want people to know I played).
I think it's a total BS response. Other platforms allow for usernames to be changed and it hasn't lead to chaos. If what he says is true than they could easily make it so names can only be changed a set number of times in a given period.
I'd have rather he said nothing than to spew this nonsense.
Yeah, this could be easily solved by limiting it to 1 change a month or something.
I call BS on this as well.
They should just charge people like $15 to change their PSN name, or restrict it to one change per year (XB Live). Both would restrict trolls from changing frequently and ruining the experience for others.
I call BS too, at least they can do is give us the ability to delete trophies.
I agree with all of the above. This is bollocks, or at the very least an embarrassingly primitive form of community management.
Implement a way for the users to /ignore other users, and have the system maintaining that ignore permanent across nick changes. Should be easy peasy as surely the account ID is static anyway.
I mean, what difference does it make to the griefing if the griefer call himself one thing in one game and another in another?
Exactly that sounds like a complete BS reason from someone without a clue how databases work.
There's no reason why they wouldn't still be able to keep track of a PSN user even if he changes his nickname, and even so like others commented they could easily restrict people to only 1 change per month/qtr/year.
And what does deleting trophies have to do with abuse/spamming??
Sony sure take their sweet time to fix obvious issues, it's not like any of this stuff is new to the PS4, people have been complaining about all of this stuff since early PS3 days. My goodness sometimes I wonder if they have one programmer doing all the software UI, firmware, PSN network etc work…
I wanna change mine, so why not have a process that reviews the change. Like actual people in jobs okaying it.
Delete Trophies you say?! If so, that`s news of the decade for me. Having so many 0 % or trophies for games you didn`t really like is a pain in the ass.
Finally my OCD can relax.
That's weak Sony.
Just let us change our names and we'll pay.
Wow, Is he for real? Yes. I have been saying this exact reason for months. When you live in your own little bubble and care only about yourself you will call this BS but when you grow up, it all makes sense. Ever since people first started whining about this the idea came to me:
Someone can
A) come into a child's game (or anyone's)
B)curse, belittle, use profanity, cheat, or otherwise destroy their gaming session
C) change their user name
D) return to step A
Now is this going to happen every day? No. But the fact that it could happen on any regular basis (and it will) is a valid reason to anyone who plays responsibly and cares about the world outside of their own four walls. My friends and I often discuss how people cheez and cheat and ruin a game completely but I guess when you're one of these people you would decry this decision.
Also, if you chose an assinine, idiotic, or juvenile name for yourself (emphasis on CHOSE) and you have to live with it, that's a life lesson for you. I read on one of the forums that someone bought his system and couldn't find a name he liked that wasn't chosen already, so he simply rubbed his fingers across the keyboard (ending with a name like ewsrsdfuyihnjml;), and then wanted to change it. Well you sir, are an idiot. It's not fair that you'd have to live with your own poor decision but it's fine that someone else should have to live with having their game ruined by another? Yeah, you're the Salt of the Earth, all right.
Paid or not, I hope Sony never institutes name changing. There are some with legitimate reasons but one bad apple…
actually that person would be banned no matter how many times they changed their name
Such a great way of looking at things. Screw the quality of gaming for the majority of people on the PSN. Instead we should worry about an isolated issue that COULD happen which can EASILY be stopped/fixed/corrected/YOUGETTHEPOINT by using basic logic a 5th grader would understand.
Harerazer I'm embarrassed for you. It scares me that there are people like you on the same planet as me, hell the same universe. Please take your stupid and walk into the ocean.
Last edited by LimitedVertigo on 11/17/2014 5:38:04 PM
That would be prevented by only allowing 1 change over a certain period of time, and also like others have said changing the name wouldn't change your account. Sony would have a record of the name changes associated with a certain account and so if someone reported a certain name Sony would know who held that name at any given time. Also everything's recorded these days thanks to the share feature so if someone's abusing someone there's a record of it so it wouldn't be hard to prove.
There is nothing stopping a person from doing your steps A,B,C and D right now! by having multiple accounts, griefing on one account, then switching to the next and griefing again.
There are very simple ways to prevent people from using their user name switch to grief.
Very simple.
People should not be forced to chose a name and be stuck to that name for the rest of their lives. I chose mine in 2006, at a time when I was much younger. I have changed in nearly every way since then, and my username no longer reflects my personality. Therefore I wish to change it. If I can legally change my full name, whenever I wish, then I should be allowed to change my freaking PSN username.
As do many others. So what is the life lesson you speak of?
– Unique User ID's associated to peoples accounts.
– Mute/Report/Ban be set on a persons user ID, not their name.
– A persons profile contains a full list of name changes under a "Previously known by" list.
These are just 3 of the VERY simply methods to combat griefing.
Last edited by Akuma_ on 11/18/2014 12:49:38 AM
First off…World, I get that they could be banned but that would also kinda be like closing the barn door after the horse is gone. I've been on the internet a looooong time and I remember when people would just use Gmail, GeoCities, etc to repeatedly make accounts so they could phish, scam, and harass. It's a part of the internet that will never go away. I am glad Sony chooses to acknowledge and address it. This may not be the penultimate way to handle it but it's a start.
Now for the genius that is Vertigo, you couldn't qualify to live in my world regardless how many posts you added to the internet but at least try to post quality. Ironically, or maybe not so, your response is exactly the idea I posted against. While it may not affect myself or anyone in particular, you would rather ignore the FACT that this happens because it doesn't affect your little world. I already said, if you plugged in your hooked on Phonics disc, "Now is this going to happen every day? No. But the fact that it could happen on any regular basis (and it will)…" so I understand this won't happen to everyone. But it's like the Red Ring or the early NDS's dropped pixels. Just because it only occurs to a small portion of people doesn't make it any less valid. The odds of getting struck by lightning twice maybe a billion to one but to the man that gets struck by it twice, it's 100%. I apologize that I think of others and break that typical "lonely, sitting in mom's basement, eating Cheetos and Hot Pockets" stereotype that is you but there are millions of people who enjoy this pastime/lifestyle called gaming. Thankfully, they're not all like you.
Akuma, I get what you're saying also. But your solutions only address the situation after it happens. Sony's trying to prevent it. They should be credited instead of being called liars (not by you).
Now there are some people with legit reasons for changing their name…so make a new account and you're all set. You lose all of your ties to previous purchases? there's your life lesson. We were all assholes when we were kids and you have to live with whatever you did back then. Why should gaming be any different? I wish i could change some of the things I did years back but if we could wipe the slate clean everytime you did something, would we ever really learn? It's funny how we always want to clear our own past history but not other people's. Using an extreme example, if someone committed a murder then said "I'm sorry, let me change my history and be someone else" would that be cool? Using a more acceptable example, Michael Vick did his dogfighting thing, served his sentence, and yet people still comment and penalize him for it. It's not about feeling sorry, if you did it then you did it. Sadly, life cannot always work for the majority. The minority also counts.
yeah i feel for you shawn i would want to penalise a alot of people because of a few idiots thats sad and thats something we all need to try help to change that. but yes it you put restrictions on it and this woudn't be a problem
happy gaming
Are you on a phone? Is English not your first language?
Ya, reading his posts makes my head hurt. I love how he actually used a period this time. Maybe he's learning?
My guess is Sony could implement these features tomorrow no problem but they're saving it for a big update and a PR opportunity just like with the ps4 firmware update 2.00.
And that doesn't necessarily make Sony bad, they're just doing what every other company in the electronics industry does.
I don't see the PR opportunity in delaying a feature that A. has been offered by other platforms for several years and B. Has no justifiable reason for being withheld from the consumer.
"Hey look everyone, we FINALLY decided to give you that feature you've been asking for. Sorry that we delayed its release while everyone else offered it. If you're wondering why just ask Harerazer!"
Yeah, now that I think about it you're right, it doesn't make sense.
No Matt, what doesn't make sense is them lying in the first place. Why would they just create this lie? I could see if you said the reason was stupid or unimportant in some way, but to say they would sit down and concoct a lie that is totally feasible…that is what doesn't make sense. What also doesn't make sense is why Vertigo would attach himself to my nutsack so tightly. Now THAT remains one of life's biggest mysteries. Maybe it's because he's upset that I called him out on his complete ineptness at Gaming and possibly exposed him as one of said Griefers that Sony is trying to address. Hmmm…
i call bs on this because people always just make a new psn id to grief people or cheat anyways. i already ran into a few of those people. my stance on this is more on the part that if you didnt think this through, you live with the consequences. if you really want to change ids, just make a new one. losing your trophies, lesson learned. besides, its not like you lose them anyway, you still have access to old account anyway. if they do let people change ids though, maybe they should come up with a notoriety system. if they go above certain levels, they lose access to stuff like changing psn ids again. i wouldnt mind knowing if adding a certain person would be worth it ahead of time. with the share features, reporting things can be proved easy.
i would rather they focus on the things they break with each update.
with sony focusing on social aspects when they introduced ps4, these features are broken. i was sending a message last night and it failed at least 15 times. messages sometimes wont show up until minutes later. why is the message system broken? ps3 message system gave me no problems. ps4 is the more powerful system yet the ps3 does things better than ps4. ps4 even has features missing that ps3 has.
facebook integration is broken. all the videos i uploaded wont show on ps4 anymore. i uploaded one yesterday and it wont show on ps4. theyre all showing up on facebook but i dont really want to go there just to watch a video. when i go to link facebook with ps4, it wont save info. i have to retype everything again and set it up again.
im glad they gave us the pause downloads but its useless downloading 50gb files. a game auto download last night, i could only pause during the first 6gb. i cant pause the rest at all. so now its constantly downloading. woke up and games i actually play had updates so those downloads took even longer to finish. with bf4 dlc tomorrow, assuming that update plus dlc will be around 7gb, will take forever to download. i want to pause the game download so i could download the dlc first. i dont have the fastest internet but at least theres no monthly cap.
Why aren't you able to pause the download, regardless of how much of it is completed?
I agree with you on the perks of having no monthly cap. I've downloaded 3+TB since September.
when you start a big download, the download list would only show the partial download. thats the only one you can pause, when that finishes, it shows that the game is "installed". basically its saying it finished the partial upload. you cant pause it anymore. if you go to the game icon and press option and go to info, it shows the actual download progress, no option to pause that. in my case, the 6gb partial finished but the actual download was 6gb/45gb. it will keep downloading in the background but we cant pause it when a new download starts like an update file.
I've been wanting to change my name for a while, but don't want to lose my platinums. My friends and I have a little competition going on who can get the most every year.
ok now that is the biggest load of horses*t I've ever heard!
ok they can ban the ID and being able to change that before the ban would hinder that, but then why not ban the mac address?
theres so many individual numbers tied to each system this is a crock of sh*t, there is no reason why it has to be done on a ID level rather than anything else.
Charge .99 for a name change…that would end any desire to troll but allow some of us to change our psn…I've been wanting that from day 2!