Change Your Nickname in Steam, Roblox, Discord and More

The rename button sits in a different place in every one of these six, and so does the price. Steam and Discord let you change the name people see as often as you like, for free. Roblox charges Robux for the username and gives you the display name free once a week. Minecraft allows one change every 30 days and holds your old name for 37. Free Fire wants a rename card. Standoff 2 charges too, and does not publish what. Below is each one in order, with the part most guides skip: what happens to the name you are leaving.

Short answer

Where	What you change	Cost	How often	Old name
Steam	Profile name (32 bytes)	Free	Unlimited	Kept in a public alias history
Roblox	Username	Robux, amount shown at checkout	Any time you pay	Stays visible in settings, profile and search
Roblox	Display name	Free	Once every 7 days	Replaced
Minecraft Java	Username	Free	Once every 30 days	Released to others after 37 days
Discord	Username	Free	No documented limit	Released; must be unique to claim
Discord	Display name	Free	Any time	Replaced
Free Fire	Nickname	Name change card	Per card	Released
Standoff 2	Nickname	Paid, price unverified	Per purchase	Released

Steam

Steam has two names and only one of them is the one you mean. The account name is your login and is not shown to anybody. The profile name is what appears in the friends list, in the CS2 scoreboard and on your profile, and it is edited from your profile page under Edit Profile.

It is free and there is no cooldown we could find. The real constraint is the length: 32 bytes, not 32 characters. Latin letters cost one byte each, Cyrillic two, and the styled Unicode letters people paste in cost four, which is why a fully bold Steam name stops at eight letters. The Steam name generator counts bytes rather than characters while you type, which is the only counter that matches what Steam does.

Valve's help centre renders entirely in the browser, so we could not pull a citable support article on renaming as of 6 September 2026. What we could verify is the part below, about the alias history, and that one is more consequential anyway.

Roblox

Roblox splits the two names and prices them differently, which is the whole story.

Display name — free, once every seven days, three to twenty characters. This is the name shown above your avatar and in experiences. For most people it is the only one that matters.

Username — costs Robux. Roblox's help article does not name a price; it states that a change requires Robux and shows the amount at the Buy step in Account Info. Three to twenty characters, letters and digits, at most one underscore and not at the ends. The validation runs before the payment, so a name that is too long, wrongly punctuated or already taken costs you nothing to discover.

Neither name accepts anything decorative. We sent bold text, small caps, frames, stars, Cyrillic and emoji to the public display-name validator on 6 September 2026 and every one returned Display name contains invalid characters. Full character rules are in the Roblox username rules guide, and the Roblox username generator only produces strings that pass them.

Minecraft

Java Edition: the username is 3 to 16 characters of a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and the underscore, changed on the preferences page of minecraft.net. You may change it no more than once every 30 days, and the name you release becomes claimable by anyone else 37 days later.

That seven-day gap is worth understanding. Because the cooldown is 30 days and the hold is 37, you can bounce between two names indefinitely and neither one ever reaches the public pool. It is the only rename system among these six that gives you a second name for free.

One-way doors: accounts with names under three characters from the game's early days lose them permanently on the first change.

Bedrock Edition: there is no separate Minecraft name — you are shown as the Xbox gamertag on your Microsoft account. Per minecraft.wiki, the first gamertag change is free and later ones cost US$9.99 on the Xbox website. Signed out, you can set any 3-32 character profile name locally, but multiplayer is unavailable in that state.

More ideas that fit the 16-character rule are in the Minecraft username guide, and the Minecraft name generator enforces the character set.

Discord

Discord has three layers and people rename the wrong one constantly.

Username — the lowercase handle others use to add you: a-z, digits, dot and underscore, 2 to 32 characters. Free to change; Discord documents no cooldown. The obstacle is uniqueness, which is why nearly every short handle now carries a dot or a digit.

Display name — 1 to 32 characters, accepts spaces, emoji and any script. Free, changeable at will, and the layer where styled fonts belong.

Server nickname — per server, and a moderator can change or reset it.

Discord's documentation adds two limits worth remembering: usernames cannot contain @, #, : or the string discord, and all names are trimmed of leading, trailing and excessive internal whitespace, which is why a name padded with spaces comes back empty. The Discord name guide has 300 handles that already pass the rules, and the Discord name generator builds them.

Free Fire and Standoff 2: what does a rename cost?

Free Fire needs a name change card. Players in an April 2026 thread on r/freefire list three sources: 390 diamonds in the shop, 40 tokens in the Universal Ring exchange, or a reward from an event stage. A March 2026 thread is a complaint about the card leaving the guild shop, so where you buy it moves between updates — check all three before spending. The limit is 12 characters, the minimum is 2, and the card is spent even if the symbol filter eats half your string.

Test the exact name first: the Free Fire name generator counts the twelve live, and the stylish names guide lists which glyphs the game keeps.

Standoff 2 also charges for a rename, and we could not verify a current price from a source we can check — Axlebolt publishes no help centre. Read the number the game shows you rather than a figure from an article. The limit is 2 to 16 characters and the game accepts letters from any alphabet, so Cyrillic is the cheap route to a free name; details in the Standoff 2 nickname guide.

For both: paste the name, do not retype it. Small caps and gothic cannot be entered from a phone keyboard, and a retyped name is a different string from the one you tested.

What happens to your old name?

Three different answers, and only one of them is what most people assume.

Steam keeps it, publicly. Every profile carries an alias history that anyone can read. On 6 September 2026 we queried the public endpoint on several profiles and got full lists back — one of them running from 2011 to 2019, complete with the date of each change. Renaming on Steam adds a line to a log; it does not erase anything.

Roblox keeps it, and says so. Its help article states that previous usernames remain visible in your settings, on your profile and through People search, and that the account creation date carries over. Changing back to an old username costs Robux again.

Minecraft, Discord, Free Fire and Standoff 2 release it. In Minecraft the delay is 37 days and then it belongs to whoever claims it first. On the other three it goes back into the pool immediately, and short names are gone within minutes.

The practical consequence: if the reason for renaming is that you no longer want to be associated with the old name, Steam and Roblox will not give you that, and no setting changes it.

What usually goes wrong

You renamed the wrong layer. The Discord username changed but everyone still sees the old label, because the display name sits on top. Fix: change the display name, which is the visible one, and leave the handle alone.

The rename is spent and the name saved short. A filter removed a character on Free Fire or Standoff 2, and the card or the payment is gone regardless. Fix: check the exact string against the game's limit before opening the profile, and swap the most exotic glyph rather than the whole name.

The Minecraft change is refused with days left. The 30-day clock runs from the last change, not from the start of the month. Fix: check the date of your previous change on the preferences page before planning anything around a new name.

Someone took your old Minecraft name. You changed, waited, and after 37 days it was claimed. Fix: if you want to keep a name, keep it — the 30-day cooldown against the 37-day hold means bouncing between two names is safe, but a name you leave for good is genuinely gone.

The new name breaks your reputation trail. Clip titles, tournament brackets and old VODs all point at the previous name. Fix: rename between seasons rather than mid-event, and keep the old name in a profile bio for a while so people can connect the two.

Decide which layer you actually want to change before you spend anything, and give a shortlist a week — the nickname ideas guide covers how to test a name against the length rules of the platform you actually play on, and the gamertag generator shows the count live for each one.

FAQ

How often can you change a Minecraft username?

Once every 30 days on the preferences page of minecraft.net, and the name you leave behind is released to everyone else after 37 days. That seven-day gap is deliberate: it lets you hold two names at once, changing back and forth, without either becoming claimable.

Does changing your Steam name delete the old one?

No. Steam keeps a public alias history, and anyone can read it — the endpoint under a profile returns every previous name with the date it changed. We pulled a list going back to 2011 on 6 September 2026. Renaming on Steam adds a name rather than replacing one.

How much does a Roblox name change cost?

Roblox does not print a figure in its help article; it says a username change requires Robux and shows the amount at the Buy step. The display name, which is the one other players actually see, is free and changeable once every seven days.

Can you change a Discord username for free?

Yes, and there is no documented cooldown. The catch is uniqueness: the username must be free, and almost every short clean handle is taken. The display name on top of it takes spaces, emoji and any script, and changes as often as you like.

What does a Free Fire rename cost?

A name change card. Players in an April 2026 thread on r/freefire report three sources — 390 diamonds in the shop, 40 tokens in the Universal Ring exchange, or a stage reward from an event. Availability shifts between updates, so check all three before spending diamonds, and note the card is consumed whether or not the filter keeps your string intact.