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PSA: Riot Account "that username already exists"

Eeyore·11/29/2019, 5:18:11 PM·48 votes·17,049 views

Did you receive something like this? https://i.imgur.com/lY9PzBu.png[]

You are NOT being asked to choose a single username to access each of them. Your Riot Account will NOT be consolidating all your existing accounts. Your Riot Account is not comparable to Battle.NET where you have the option to connect to multiple League of Legends accounts from a single log-in. Your current NA and EUW accounts will always remain separate. What's changing is that your new Riot Account will be able to log-in on both NA and EUW - e.g. I will be able to take this account to NA. My current NA account will remain separate (and might as well be deleted hereafter).

You need to update EACH account to be separately unique.

DO NOT START WITH YOUR MAIN ACCOUNT - you will be told that the username already exists. It does - by one of your alternate accounts.

You need to change-away each of the other conflicting accounts first. Once there are no conflicts - the prompt to change your username for your main account will disappear and you're done.

Unfortunately, if (after renaming all your other accounts) you're still prompted to rename your main account - that means another email address owns that username. If you also own that email address/username - you will need to contact support. The system is reserving usernames on a per-email-address basis. As you do not have the option to change your username if there's no conflict, there's no way for you to rename your "old" account yourself if it's hogging your username (e.g. if your first account was on EUNE but then you created a new account on EUW that became your main, but you used two different email addresses, EUNE's email address would have dibs on the name and EUW would be prompted to change, even if you then created NA, BR, TK and PBE accounts on the second email address - they would all need changing). Support will walk you through the steps of proving you own both email addresses and swapping the names for you.

I imagine this PSA is too late for some users - you were told that your username was already taken and have picked a new one for your main account. (Especially if your browser automatically logged you in to your main account.) Don't worry though - support will also swap your account names if you made a mistake.

It would be helpful if the email explicitly said "REDACTED1 is available for you to claim, but you must first remove other accounts associated with that username." - but it doesn't. It isn't clear from the email if you're the reason that you cannot use your own username.

19 Comments

Eeyore11/29/2019, 5:37:08 PM32 votes

I initially didn't understand why I couldn't keep my current username and contacted support, and Blitzcrank Bot sent me this:

Q: I want to keep my username for my main account, but I used it for my other accounts in other regions. A: While I have a bit of a machine-bias, you humans can be quite capable on your own. If you have multiple accounts with the same username (Including PBE accounts), and want to keep your original username on your main account, you can consolidate these on your own. You will need to log into the others first, change the names there, while leaving the account you wish to keep the username on till the last. Doing this will allow you to keep the username on the last accessed account. If, after those changes, the system still prompts you to change the username on your main account, it means it is still not globally unique (thus meaning it is owned by another player), so you will have to pick another one.

The email and Riot's official Q&A post about this topic do not make it explicitly clear that you're not being asked to create a super-account. **You're being asked to create a unique Riot Account for ALL of your current League of Legends accounts. **

... Riot, it would have been much more sensible to ask users to create a completely new Riot Account and then link their existing League of Legends accounts to their Riot Account. Your Riot Account should use an email address and password/2FA - unique usernames isn't sustainable, especially since I assume you want your new games to bring in new players. Your Summoner Names would then become non-unique and be assigned a uniquely-identifying number - e.g. the summoner name for this account could become Eeyore#1234. From the Riot Launcher you would then be able to pick any of your linked accounts for when you hit Play.

Having the ability to merge accounts (friends list and inventories) would be neat, too, for players who don't want to maintain their current NA/EUW accounts separately - either for free or as a premium service (or even free during a promotional period and thereafter it's charged at a premium). Duplicate inventory items could either be refunded or added to your Hextech Inventory as permanents for you to do with as you please (the former would probably be a better gesture of goodwill, but it depends just how many players buy things multiple times).

For future game titles, you could have the option to promote one of your existing Summoner Names to your public username for social features - or alternatively have the option to pick a new one. Or, you could continue to have "Summoners Names" be game-specific. On Battle.net you have a single username but each game has its own profile icons, except WoW where your "profile icon" is one of your characters - League could be the equivalent of WoW where each linked account is a separate "Summoner". Whether or not your public username is the same as one of your Summoner names would be up to you.

Zandergeef11/30/2019, 6:15:14 PM2 votes

This was absolute garbage and super frustrating.

Random Elephant12/5/2019, 7:12:12 AM2 votes

Just here to add that people investing actual money into multiple servers (Say EUW and EUNE for example), probably wouldn't wanna use a global account originating on EUNE, that would make them a completely new summoner profile on EUW, wiping out all their skins and stuff.

They are still going to login with one account on EUNE, and with another account, the other old account full of skins, on EUW.

This makes the feature not only absolutely useless, but actually annyoing since it forces you to fiddle with your names.

One would think merging the accounts into one was one of the main reasons doing all this.

Blossom of Time11/29/2019, 7:13:18 PM2 votes

I honestly don't even know what all of you are talking about over the past few days. Like I don't think I ever got anything like this so I don't know how to relate. :(

Xealyth12/4/2019, 11:55:00 PM1 votes

Really stupid that inactive accounts are just being allowed to essentially steal our login usernames.

Raistling12/6/2019, 11:01:00 AM1 votes

This is way more complicated than it should... I can't claim my account name and I believe this is some conflict with an old, supposed to be deleted account that I had but got hacked at one point. Back then support said they can't let me recover it but they can delete it so I can recreate it with the same username and mail. I guess they didn't deleted it completely.

It crossed my mind that maybe I had some forgotten account with the same name at some other region/server but the account recovery didn't returned anything to my email (which I use since forever so it is not possible to have used something else).

I'm in limbo right now and I hope to hear back from the ticket I opened, asking if the existing account is using the same email which indicates that it was me at some point at least and if they can merge the accounts or I don't know what. Delete the other one I guess?

So confusing....

At the very least they can let us change username after 22 January when the other account will be deleted. So I can get some other name now and change later.

scarvig12/6/2019, 10:51:27 PM1 votes

and they couldnt at least elaborate on which fucking server the claimed name collision comes from? that way you could at least easily see if its on the pbe where its very likely that its your account all along that caused the collision. giving you at least a hint on any long forgotten side accounts in other servers...

i know for a fact that i had an account on the pbe and i believe i once had one on NA but my main is on EUW and guess what? those other accounts were not in use for so long i couldnt tell you their accountnames even if i wanted.

Yordle Xayah11/29/2019, 9:01:19 PM1 votes

https://imgur.com/WnZmATx.png[]

??????????????

Yordle Gunner11/29/2019, 9:51:57 PM1 votes

Well this is the price you pay for smurfing.

Nerava11/30/2019, 11:08:30 PM1 votes

AFAIK I'm the only one with my username and didn't make a PBE account, unless I forgot about it, and I still needed a new username. Is there any way to change it again so I don't have to change saved logins? It's not too annoying, but I'd still like to keep my original username.