Don’t get your hopes up too much, but it looks like there is renewed hope that PlayStation Network users will finally be able to change their names. This comes from Unreal Engine 4 patch notes that mention that the PS4 SDK has been updated to version 4.008.061. One of the new features of the software development kit, which was spotted by NeoGAF user Kirbasin, is that users can be identified by their account ID instead of their online name.
Here’s what the patch notes say:
Refactored the PlayStation 4 Online Subsystem engine plugin to support PlayStation 4 SDK version 4.008.061.
Deprecated the use of ?Sce Np Online Id,? replacing it with ?Sce Np Account Id,? as per Sony’s recommendation. Online users are now exclusively identified by their ?Sce Np Account Id.? Simplified the handling of unique net IDs across the PS4 online subsystem.
Switched from ?Np Toolkit? to ?Np Toolkit2,? to support the new APIs which work with ?Sce Np Account Id.?
Added asynchronous name resolution to convert between ?Sce Np Online Id? and ?Sce Np Account Id,? using Sony’s ID mapper web interface.
For PlayStation 4 online users, the ?To String? and ?Get Bytes? functions in ?Unique Net Id? now return the user’s ?Sce Np Account Id.?
Previously these functions returned the user’s ?Sce Np Online Id.? Any custom online code or services backend will need to handle identifying users by their ?Sce Np Account Id,? as according to Sony’s recommendations.
If required, t...