Despite having owned the Half-Life 2 Orange Box for some time now, it was only this morning that I gave Team Fortress 2 a quick blast. After loading it up and getting shot to pieces a couple of times in a row, I noticed that I hadn’t changed my name from the default GEPlayer. So I open up the options screen to hunt out where I can change my name and low and behold, the option just isn’t there. W. T. F?

So, I quit the game and go googling for the answer. Most of the answers are about opening the console and typing commands, which doesn’t permanently change the nick, and has to be re-done every time you load the game. So after 10 minutes or so (about as much as I can handle if I’m trying to find the answer to something) I find a post that indicates you need to change your name via the “Friends” option in Steam.

Now I’ve never looked in the friends section, as I’m not part of a clan or anything and just like to mess around online from time to time, therefore I have no friends in the list. But you have to go into the View/Settings menu in the Friends screen, which then has a place to change your nick. I’ve not tested it yet, but I suspect this is a global setting, for all Valve games, which makes me wonder. Fine, for someone like me who isn’t part of a clan, but what about the people that are? And are in different clans for different games? You’ll have to change your nick before every match and to me that just seems stupid. At the very least there should be a check box to apply the setting across all Valve games or not, so those who need to have different nicks in each one don’t have to go through the hassle of changing the nick every time.