While I understand that buyers of the Premiere edition get numbers attached to their username to fulfill the promise to the Founder edition buyers to choose their username, I'm asking myself if those numbers will one day be removed.
Preferably before the landrush free users come.
I doubt it. The reason for those numbers is not to make the Founder's Edition players feel special, it is to allow everyone else to get the username they want (except of course the presence of the # numeric extension), similar to Discord and what other services have been doing in recent years.
It is generally preferable to allow 5000 people to just call themselves something common like "John", and provide a unique extension automatically, than to make people hack their own usernames to make them unique.
I still think this system will not change, because if you take the numbers for premiere away, what was the big reason then to be a founder? Therefore I think this will not change.
But I also feel that the system with the numbers is not too bad. I mean just think of this:
If everyone would be able to take their wish-name (as @Sornin mentioned "John"), you can be identified by the number for everyone, but you still have the name you wanted.
Like John#2456 or John#8875 is waaaaay better than having all those Jóhn, Joon, Jooooohhhnnnnn, Jóhǹ, etc. which you would have if each name would be unique.
It won't happen globally but depending on individual games they can choose to display or not display the numbers on a case by case basis.
Hopefully this doesn't happen as then people can impersonate other users and display bad behavior in games. Keep the numbers always.
I see your point...
Xbox did take on this not to long ago but they made it where if the user was the first to get that name then it would not have numbers, for example when I created my account with this username I was expecting #0000 at the end but it's not there. I even search myself
, yes I'm weird, and it was not there. To be on the safe side I even used a old account and again was not there.
So could Stadia adopt this method that could benefit those who could truly come up with unique names as well as siding with other users who want to use a common name?
About the founders, I can not believe this was not mentioned but the red star medal emote is something I'm positive should say enough that this is a founder.
I kinda would love to have my name just Xintinel without the numbers. The platform and idea behind Stadia is apparently amazing to make Xbox shake in their boots.
It won't change. There are already many duplicate usernames out there with different #. But we know it can be hidden, and I hope developers do do that in games and only show it in menus.
(We know they can be hidden because they don't show up when you look at your friends list)