Blizzard offers Starcraft 2 players free name change, as apology for feature delay

Back in the primordial soup of multiplayer gaming, it was cool to have numbers in your online handle, by which I mean it was l33t, by which I mean it was awful. The problem is that, as we grew wise to this fact, developers stopped letting us change our names, at least without forking over an unjustifiable sum of money for the privilege. Now some of us are stuck as Snip3rDude91, when we really feel like more of a Snip3rDude92. Well the good news - for Starcraft 2 players, at least - is that Blizzard are giving everyone the chance to change their names once, and for free. So this time think long and hard about whether you want to to be Terran4Eva or Terran4Neva. Details lie beneath the break.

As Polygon report, it's an act of apology by Blizzard for not living up to its promises and instituting such a service before now. Once your free name-change is gone, you'll get another after the Clans function goes live, but after that you'll have to wait until they finally release Heart of the Swarm, at which point paid name-changing should move up the priority list.

If you hate your name, here's how you go about changing it: hit up Deed Poll, they'll sort you out. As for changing your name in the game, we'll let Blizzard use its own fancy words . "If you'd like to change your character name, log in to Account Management and choose your StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty game license. On your game license screen a "Character Name Change" button at the bottom will initiate the request. After confirming that you'd like to change your character name, log in to StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, and you'll be prompted to assign your character a new name."

Sounds simple enough. Just, please, don't pick anything where numb3rs t4ke th3 place 0f l3tt3rs this t1me.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.