There are various things you can do to spruce up your Steam profile. One of them is changing your username.
Key Takeaways
- Your Steam username can be changed easily, while your Steam account name cannot.
- Steam keeps a record of previous profile names to avoid confusion with aliases.
- Assign nicknames to Steam friends to remember their usernames easily.
We gamers are in a unique space where we all go by different names. Everyone has an alias, whether it's your gamertag on Xbox, PlayStation name, or Steam username. This is great because it lets us express ourselves with a name of our choice instead of the one given to us. But, as the years go on and we get older, some of those names we thought were so cool and edgy end up being more embarrassing than anything else.
Your Steam username is one you will have for years if not decades as the primary PC gaming platform. This one name will be what other players see when you chat on Steam, but also in all the individual games you play. Unlike your real name, changing your Steam username isn't a huge hassle and can be done as many times as you like.
Steam account name vs Steam username vs SteamID
What do people see?
Before we get started it's important to know the difference between your Steam account name and your username.
When you set up your Steam account you will have chosen an account name. This is the name you use to log into Steam, and it's permanently tied to your Steam account. This cannot be changed.
When you went through the account creation process you also created a unique SteamID which is linked to your Steam account. As standard, your SteamID can be found when you edit your profile as it's part of your custom URL (the link to view your profile in a browser) and it usually starts with a load of digits including 76561198. You are able to create a custom URL, but more on this later.
Your Steam username is essentially a public profile name for your Steam account and that's the one thing that can be changed.
How to change your Steam username
Get a new tag
While you might not be able to change your Steam account name, you can change your Steam username, aka your profile name. Your profile name is what appears on your Steam profile and the name that's visible to your friends too.
Changing it is really easy. Just follow these steps:
- Log in to your Steam account
- On the top menu where you see Steam, Library, Community, and then your account name, click your name
- From the drop-down menu click "profile"
- On the right-hand side of your Steam profile click "edit profile"
- Under the general settings tab look for "profile name" and click in that field to change it
- Once you've edited it scroll down to the bottom of the page and click save
From this section of your profile editor, you can also change other things such as your location, profile summary and custom URL. You can also click to add a new avatar to match your Steam profile name and a background to jazz up your profile as well.
You are free to change your Steam profile name basically as much as you want. You'll still need to use your account name whenever you log in, but if you're the sort of person that likes to change names regularly then you can do that without much fuss by following the above steps. It's worth knowing about aliases though.
