Helldivers 2 players are learning the hard way that you can’t change your name

When you’re picking a name for yourself in a video game, it’s not unusual to change your mind afterward. But while most titles offer a way to rectify your naming mistakes, that apparently isn’t the case for Helldivers 2—and players are learning about the restriction the hard way.

A Helldivers 2 player’s hilarious Reddit post on March 5 is a scary reminder for those who love picking odd in-game names thinking they can change them later. The player chose an unfortunately crude (and NSFW) combination of words for their name, and now they’re stuck with it indefinitely, since Arrowhead Game Studios doesn’t provide any means to edit names—at least for now.

While jokes about the player’s unpleasant name poured in, interestingly, many players pointed out that they were able to change their names in Helldivers 2 via Steam and PlayStation profiles. All they had to do was change their Steam or PS profile name, and the new name appeared in-game a short time later. Having said that, the OP confirmed this method didn’t work for them, so this solution might not apply to every player. 

In fact, a Redditor explained in the comments that they were able to change their Helldivers 2 name using the Steam method once, but for some reason, they were unable to do so again. If this is true, it looks like Arrowhead Game Studios might have disabled the unofficial name change method.

There’s no official statement regarding name changes, but players suspect the developer is pouring all its attention into bumping up server capacity to support all the traffic. You can still change the name of your ship, though.

At the time of writing, it’s unknown whether the developer plans to add functionality to change your character name. Right now, the only way to change a name you don’t like is to create a new Helldivers 2 account. This comes with the pain of losing all your progress, but at least you’ll be able to start again without an embarrasing name.