PlayStation is rolling out the ability for players to change their PlayStation Network ID later today, launching a feature that has been long-requested and was tested through a limited beta last October.
Developers with games on PlayStation 4 might already be aware of some of the complications that came with the new feature, and PlayStation has elaborated on those in a blog post detailing the full launch.
In short, the company guarantees that games published after April 1, 2018 will take to any changed PSN IDs without a hitch. Games published before that date, however, are potentially a different story.
Specifically, PlayStation says that “the large majority of most actively played PS4 games support the feature” and has a list of games tested with ID changes that have either have no known issues, issues identified, or critical issues that it is urging players to read before changing IDs.
The list only offers information on the severity of those issues, not the specific problems players may experience with each game if they opt to change their name so it may be up to the developers themselves to offer up that information to their players.
Any game on the “games with issues identified” list could display pre-change PSN IDs in game, cause links between games and PSN accounts to temporarily (but not irreversibly) break, or lose things like saved controller and audio settings.
Games with Critical Issues, a list that only includes 10 games tested with PSN ID changes, could lose in-game currency after a player’s PSN ID change as well as lose in-game scores and trophy progress, issues with online play, and other issues. PlayStation outright does not recommend that players change their online ID if they “wish to continue playing that game without losing its entitlements and achievements which you have already bought or released. It is possible to incur permanent game errors or data loss as a result of using the feature.”
The first PSN ID change is free, but players will have to pay $9.99 for each change after that very first one. Unlike username changes on other services, changing a PSN ID doesn’t free up the old username, and PlayStation users have the ability to change back to any previous ID for free as many times as they want.
The post also notes that PSN ID changes aren’t supported by either PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Vita systems or games.