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Sony won’t let PlayStation users change their PSN ID due to the risk of players abusing the system, SCEA president Shawn Layden has explained.
“We want to give you more control across your experience and your profile and your presence on the network,” Layden told IGN.
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“At the same time, as you’ll understand, 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.”
Asked by IGN whether the risk of abuse is the specific reason behind the feature’s delay, Layden “answered in the affirmative”.
“[We want to do name changing] in a way that’s transparent, but also don’t let people morph themselves, either,” he continued. “And yeah, it’s terrible that you have to make decisions on a service sometimes by optimizing around the bad actor. I hate that we have to do that. So we’re trying to balance that between… the 99 percent of users going to have a good experience, how can we help make that happen without giving one more tool to the bad actor to go in and ruin the experience for others?”
While Layden’s comments suggest otherwise, technical constraints of PlayStation Network have often been believed to be the main reason behind players’ inability to change their PSN ID.
Nevertheless, the option to change your PSN ID continues to be one of the PlayStation community’s most-requested features and – understandably – Layden’s comments haven’t gone down particularly well with fans.
“What a poor reason,” wrote one commenter. “Lol, all the griefers are now happy they are stopping name changes. Way to empower the 1%. Besides there are countless ways to combat this hypothetical abuse.”
“Make it so you can only change your name once a year,” added another. “Sorted!”
Microsoft currently lets Xbox Live members change their Gamertag as often as they like for a small fee.
Due you believe that the risk of griefing is the real reason why players are unable to change their PSN ID, or do you think there’s an underlying technical reason? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Source: ign.com
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