PlayStation has finally confirmed when we can expect to see the long-promised online ID change feature come to PS4, and it’s soon. Very soon. Tomorrow (April 11), in fact.
Writing on the PlayStation Blog, the company confirmed that from tomorrow, we’ll finally be able to rid ourselves of the embarrassing IDs we chose back when we were ten years old. xX_FlAmes0fdEsiR3_Xx sounded super cool back in the day, but being stuck with it all this time has made me less sure.
It was also confirmed that we’ll be able to change our IDs via web browser if we want, and that handy little feature will also be available from tomorrow.
I should point out that, as PlayStation mentioned back when they first announced the feature, the ID change feature will only be compatible with PS4 games originally published after April 1, 2018.
However, PlayStation’s most recent update did warn that it had found “an instance where a game did not fully support the feature, even though it was originally published after April 1, 2018.”
The blog post noted that all PS4 games originally published on or after April 1, 2018 have been developed to support the online ID change feature, but “there may be cases where a game is not fully compatible.”
If you want to check out a list of the officially tested games for yourself before making a change to you ID, you can head here. PlayStation claims that “the large majority of most actively played PS4 games support the feature.”
Before you fully commit to changing your ID, you should make yourself aware of the some of the potential issues you could run into with the games that haven’t been tested.
While it’s not massively likely, you could risk losing progress within games, including save data and trophies. You could also lock yourself out of access to add-on content such as in-game currency and DLC. Obviously, either of these things would be a major pain in the butt.
Fortunately, if anything really crazy does happen to you, PlayStation says that simply reverting back to your old ID “should” solve most issues. It also expects that these issues will occur only in a “small number” of games.
If you’re still feeling good about changing your ID, all you need to do is boot up your PS4, go to settings, and navigate to your profile (which is in account management). From there, you’ll find a new option to tinker with your online ID. Easy peasy. In theory.
We’ll see just how smoothly this feature pans out over the next few days, I guess.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.