For as long as I can remember, PlayStation users were never able to change their online names, which was odd because you see that feature pretty much everywhere else. Well, that may change soon as game developers who spoke to Kotaku said that they were preparing for that inevitable change.
It looks like PlayStation will make its promise it made last year when Shawn Layden, Chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, said in an interview at PlayStation Experience 2017 regarding PSN ID changes that by the time the next PlayStation Experience happens, that they may no longer be an issue.
If Sony sticks to the timetable that Shawn Layden spoke of, then by December, PlayStation users might be able to change their names. Nothing official has been confirmed of at this time. Don’t expect it to be made official during PlayStation Experience 2018, because Sony recently stated that there won’t be one this year.
Three people from three different studios who work on multiplayer games have said that they have been tweaking settings and fixing bugs to make sure that everything will work when Sony finally provides the option to change your PSN name.
There was a fourth person who shared a photo that they obtained from internal Sony documentation. The photo showed a PSN profile which had a new option “edit username”. The person, who also works for a game studio, said that the document was a guide to change one’s name on the PlayStation Network.
There is no timeframe for when this change will take effect. However, the developers have said that fixing old multiplayer games to account for the name change is a difficult and time-consuming process. It may be that way because of how PSN IDs were set up when the PlayStation Network launched in 2006 with the PlayStation 3. The account ID had to be linked to your username instead of a universal identifier, which might have made things easier.