‘Minecraft’ Name Changes Now Final As Dev Gives Updates For PC, Console And Pocket Edition

Coders Rest In The Office Of Swedish Company Mojang In Stockholm — Coders rest in the Mojang company office in Stockholm January 21, 2013. A pool table, a pinball machine, board games and Lego dot the offices of Mojang, the small Swedish company behind the wildly popular Minecraft video game, and one of its founders is wearing a tuxedo and purple tie on a recent "formal Friday". The atmosphere reflects the independent spirit that has contributed to the raw identity of the game that has just sold 20 million copies. The founders want to keep it that way. Mojang, the Swedish word for gadget, has so far resisted selling to a bigger player or listing on the stock market even though that could mean monster payoffs for the 25-person staff and funding to expand dramatically its games. Picture taken January 21, 2013. Reuters/Ints Kalnins

"Minecraft" is getting a lot of love, both from fans and developers alike. Mojang has recently announced that the mobile version has just hit the 30 million mark in sales. In the latest rundown of the top December sellers for the PlayStation, "Minecraft has also received quite the recognition as it ranked as the second top game. Meanwhile, it dominated both the PS3 and PS Vita list as number one.

But more than this, the developer has announced the much-awaited name changes in "Minecraft" days after the teaser tweet from Dinnerbone appeared. The new feature will be available starting Feb. 4, and all fans need to do is have a Mojang account. For others, it also works if you sign into "Minecraft" using your email.

However, fans have one concern regarding the name changing feature: what if someone already has the name you are looking to own? According to Mojang, two players cannot have the same name, but it is possible to take on the name of another person, granted that the original owner of the name changes his name. The aspiring owner will then have to wait 37 days before the "free" name will become available.

In order to avoid players who keep changing their names every so often, Mojang has also put its foot down on the frequency of changing. Hence, the developer has added another rule that players will need to wait 30 days after changing names to be able to change to another name.

The good news about name changing is Mojang has assured "Minecraft" players that this will not affect any banned or whitelisted status, so regardless if a banned player changes his name, he will stay banned. For those who are changing names, the account is basically still the same, and they'll get to keep their inventory, pets, stats and everything they own in that server.

For the console version of "Minecraft," developer 4J Studios has some key announcements. In the tweet below, the developer has given PS4 fans something to look forward to in the next update.

In the next update, we'll fix the issue with #MinecraftPS4 in North America not being able to play with players from the rest of the world.
— 4J Studios (@4JStudios) January 9, 2015

This is just the latest in a string of updates from 4J Studios, all of which involve some form of update for the different versions of "Minecraft" on the PS3, Xbox One and Xbox 360. There have been a number of issues seen in the console versions, including Save Transfers specific to the PS3 and PS Vita (which has just been resolved by Sony) as well as Horse despawn and Redstone issues. Expect more updates from the developer in the coming weeks.