[GameSpot] - Discord's Controversial New Policy Has Prevented A Dev From Claiming Its Own Name

[343iBot]

Discord is one of the most popular gaming apps out there, but a new change in how the service's usernames work has led to a significant amount of controversy in recent days. Recently, notable indie studio Rusty Lake noted on social media that it now can't claim its own name on Discord, which is an inconvenience to say the least.

A warning for all the #indiedevs waiting to claim their own username @discord;
We just received an email that we, as Verified Owners, could finally submit a new username and wow... ‘rustylake’ is already taken! If we as a server owner with 240K+ members can’t even claim it…

— Rusty Lake Underground Blossom (@rustylakecom) May 19, 2023

Currently, Discord's naming system allows anyone to use any username, with a four-digit number called a "discriminator" attached to the end. Discord has apparently decided to forgo this system, replacing it with unique static usernames that can be made up of lowercase characters, numbers, and the period and underscore symbols. That rollout is happening slowly over the next few months, with the service's oldest users getting first dibs at their new names.

Unfortunately, though we're still early on in the process, it seems that the username "rustylake" is already taken. As Rusty Lake says, this is a significant issue for the developer, as that account might be used as an impersonator, and it might even require legal fees to file paperwork to get the account changed.

PC Gamer notes that this isn't the first time this has happened, as usernames like "pewdiepie" and "ksi" were taken early in the process, before being reverted by Discord's management. Hopefully, that's what will happen in this case. As of this writing, Rusty Lake says that it has yet to hear from Discord on this issue. However, that won't stop Discord fans from circulating a petition with 15,000 signatures that calls for the app to bring the discriminator back.

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