GAMES
How to Change Your Steam Account Name
The thing about game names is that what looked cool at 16 didn’t have the same ring when it was a little bit older. For platforms like Steam, where we’ve been playing games since we were very young, names can mean too much or too little depending on your perspective. So if you’re bored, can you change your Steam account name?
The short answer to that is no, but there is more to be said. The Steam account name is a number that cannot be changed. Your Steam profile name is the name of your friends and other players and can be changed. To clarify, let’s cover a few of the things you can and cannot do with your Steam account.
Change your Steam account name
You cannot change your Steam account name. This is the numeric identifier linked to your account and cannot be changed under any circumstances. The exact cause is unknown, but it cannot be changed in Steam’s T&Cs.
Change steam profile name
Your Steam profile name is different. This is the name that appears at the top or top right of the page. This is the name your friends use and will use to contact you in the game. You can change this name.
- Log into Steam and select Friends from the top menu.
- Select your profile name in the popup that appears.
- Type your current name to change it.
- Select OK at the bottom to save.
Your new profile name should change dynamically and be immediately visible to others.
Can I set up a new Steam account and transfer my games?
If you can’t create a new Steam account name, wouldn’t it be nice if you could set up a new account and transfer all your games? It would be nice, but you can’t. Game licenses are single-user licenses and are already assigned to your Steam account. You cannot merge accounts, this is to create a new account and transfer existing games. You’re stuck with what you have.
Deleting your Steam account
There is a big difference between uninstalling Steam and deleting your Steam account. Uninstalling simply means freeing up terabytes or hard disk space. Deleting your Steam account means exactly that. Deleting all your account information, licenses, CD keys, and anything related to this account.
This way you can create a new Steam account name but also lose access to all your games. You will lose access to all games purchased via Steam and will not be able to reuse CD keys purchased on the platform. Games you purchased elsewhere but added to Steam must be playable outside of Steam as they are licensed elsewhere.
Finally, all your community contributions, posts, discussions, mods, and everything else will also be deleted. This is really a last resort request so there is no automated way to do this. Account deletions are implemented via a support ticket and consist of several steps to verify the steps taken.
View data held by Steam
You can view everything Steam has by following this link. Here you can change some of the data held and adjust your Steam experience. You still can’t change your Steam account name, but you can change your account details, profile name, two-factor authentication, and more.
It takes a while to traverse the entire list, but you’ll be surprised at some settings. This is especially true if your Steam account is as old as mine!
Keeping your Steam account safe
Considering how important our Steam accounts are to us, it pays to keep them safe. Nothing is 100% safe, but if you take a few practical steps, you should avoid the more common problems around.
Make sure you enable Steam Guard two-factor authentication. This will send a code to your email or phone whenever someone tries to log in from an unauthorized computer or make changes to your account.
Use a strong password on your Steam account. Using a password instead of a single word is more effective as long as you can remember it. Only allow Steam to remember your login information as long as you can access your computer and obviously never share it.
Ignore emails from Steam for details. Phishing for Steam accounts is huge, so it’s best to ignore them all. If you have been notified about something by email, delete the mail but check separately on Steam. If it’s legit, you should be able to do everything you need to do inside Steam.
