Can you change your game's name on Steam after release?

Of 5,854 paid indie games that launched on Steam from 2020 to 2022, 121 (2.1%) show a different name on their store page today than they did in a public record made by April 2023.

Most of them didn’t pick a new title. They added an English name, put a genre in a subtitle, cut a clumsy tagline or stuck “Definitive Edition” on the end. Only 25 replaced the name outright, and for 21 of those 25, typing the old name into Steam’s search box no longer suggests the game.

This is for the developer whose game is already out and who suspects the name is part of the problem. We make games too, and we know how much a name carries by the time you ship. Here is Valve’s rule, what survives a rename, and what renamed games actually did.

After review, the name is Valve’s to change unless you have Profile Features

Before launch, you can rename your game in Steamworks whenever you like. Valve’s documentation says that freedom ends once your store page has passed its pre-release review.

After that, you “won’t be able to change the name of your game unless you have unlocked Profile Features.” Everyone else is asked to contact Valve in advance with the game and the names they want.

Profile Features are the same switch that makes a game eligible for Steam trading cards. Valve turns them on automatically once a game’s sales and player engagement clear a private bar, and it says reviews and wishlists aren’t part of it. If your game has no trading cards yet, assume a rename starts with a request to Valve.

Two details catch people out:

• The name lives in three places. The store page name (Basic Info under Edit Store) is what search uses. The Steamworks name (General Application Settings) is what the library and Community show. Each package that sells the game has its own name, which appears on the purchase box and at checkout. Change all three, or players will see two names.
• A localized name counts as a rename. Valve lets you set a different name for each Steam language, and says that “localizing your game name is subject to the same limitations as changing your game name.” If you launched with a Chinese or Japanese title and want an English one, that is the same request.

The app ID stays, so reviews and old links survive

A rename changes the label, not the app. The app ID, which is the number in your store URL, stays the same, and the store page, its reviews and every copy players own stay attached to it.

We checked this on the renamed games. Their review histories run unbroken across the change, so the score includes reviews written under the old name. A store link with the old name in it still loads, because Steam ignores the words after the app ID. Old links from press and videos keep working.

What does not carry over is people’s memory. Every article, video, Discord message and Reddit thread still uses the old name.

Most renames weren’t new titles

The largest group was language. 36 of the 121 games moved between a non-English title and an English one, usually an English name added to a game that launched with a Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish or German one. Our localization study shows how much of a game’s audience can sit in one language.

1. Language: English name added, or the reverse36
2. New title25
3. Subtitle or description added23
4. Shortened15
5. Minor: spelling, punctuation, word order12
6. Edition label added10

Games under Steam's Indie tag with 10+ Steam-purchase reviews in their first 12 months. The English store name read 2026-10-09 compared with a public dataset made by 2023-04-06, so each game's window runs at least three and a half years. Classified by hand 2026-10-22.

The rest fell into a few patterns:

• Added a subtitle (23). The old name stayed and gained a description: a genre, “VR”, “Online”, “Co-op”. One developer explained that players had trouble finding the game on Steam, so the title now says what the game is.
• Shortened (15). A long tagline, a year, a platform or “Chapters 0-5” came off the end.
• Edition label (10). “Definitive Edition”, “Enhanced Edition”, “DX”, “Remake”. In every case we could date, the label arrived as a major update to the game players already owned.
• Minor (12). A spelling, “and” for “&”, or the same words in a new order.
• New title (25). The main title was replaced or reworded: a working title retired, a name that collided with other games, or a name the developer felt no longer matched what the game had become.

A new title loses the old name in Steam search

We searched for every renamed game by its old name and its new name in the US store on October 22, 2026. Today’s name brought the game up in the search box suggestions for 120 of the 121.

The old name was a different story. For the 25 new titles, the suggestions under the search box showed the game for its old name in 4. The full results page, after pressing Enter, found 9. Either way, most players typing the old name would not find the game.

Adding to a name kept it. 21 of the 23 games that added a subtitle still came up for the old name, because the old name is still in the new one. Edition labels behaved the same way, at 9 of 10.

1. Subtitle or description added (21 of 23)91%
2. Edition label added (9 of 10)90%
3. Minor change (9 of 12)75%
4. Language change (15 of 36)42%
5. New title (4 of 25)16%
6. Shortened (2 of 15)13%

Store search suggestions (up to 10 games), US store, English, mature content allowed, read 2026-10-22. Shortened names fail mostly because the long old name no longer matches anything; few players type a full tagline.

Language changes sat in between, at 15 of 36. Valve says the base name still serves as “a fallback for search suggestions” when a localized name is set, which may be why adding an English name over an original title kept the original findable more often than replacing a name did.

Small changes mostly kept the old name findable, at 9 of 12. Two of the misses were long descriptive titles whose words were reordered, which is a reminder that the search box matches what people type from the start.

Renames ride on a release

We read each renamed game’s Steam announcements to find when and why the change happened. 19 of the 121 had a post that stated the rename or launched under the new name.

Only one of the 19 went out alone. Four arrived with a 1.0. The other 14 came with a major update, a new edition, a new game mode, a remaster or a rework.

That fits what we found when we followed games that came back after fading: what came before a comeback was almost always something new to play. A rename is a chance to tell players the game has changed, and developers used it that way.

Most of these games were quiet when they did it. 13 of the 19 had averaged under one Steam review a month in the three months before the rename.

The reasons developers gave, where they gave one, were concrete:

• players kept confusing the game with others that had similar names, and joined the wrong communities;
• the original name, and an edgier story, kept younger players away;
• the game had changed so much by 1.0 that the old name no longer fit;
• it was hard to find on Steam;
• a working title had shipped and never been replaced.

We can’t tell you how much the name itself helped. The review counts around these 19 renames are too small to measure, and 18 of the 19 shipped with something else that could explain any change.

When renaming is the wrong move

• If the name isn’t the problem. A rename doesn’t bring back launch visibility. The tools Steam gives a released game, like update visibility rounds, are tied to updates, not names. If the game didn’t convert people who found it, a new name won’t change that.
• If players already know it. Every review, video, article and Discord message about your game uses the current name. A new title asks all of them to learn a new one, and Steam search may not connect the two for them.
• If you can add instead of replace. If the issue is that people can’t tell what the game is, a subtitle such as “Tower Defense” or “Co-op Roguelike” says it and keeps the old name findable.
• If you’re renaming to escape bad reviews. The reviews stay with the app ID. A new name on an old score just looks like the same game with a new name.

What to do if you’re renaming a released game

1. Check that the new name is free to use. Search Steam, the other stores you’re on and the trademark registers where you sell. You’ll be living with it.
2. Prefer adding to replacing. Keep the old name in the new one if you can: “Old Name: Subtitle”. It keeps the game findable and tells existing players it’s the same game.
3. Ship it with something. Pair the rename with an update, a 1.0, a new mode or a new edition, and post a Steam event that says plainly what changed, including the name.
4. Ask Valve before you need it. Unless your game has Profile Features, file the request in advance with the game and the exact names, including any localized ones.
5. Change all three places. The store page name, the Steamworks name and every package name, plus localized names in each language you support.
6. Say the old name on the page. A line such as “formerly known as Old Name” near the top of the description helps returning players recognise the game.
7. Update everywhere else. Your other stores, your website, press kit, social profiles, trailer cards and the in-game title screen.

A name is one of the few things about a released game you can still change. Most developers who did it in our data added clarity rather than starting over, and almost all of them shipped something worth announcing with it. Strike Two partners on games that are already built, so read this knowing where it comes from.

How we measured it

The games are the paid titles under Steam’s Indie tag that launched from January 2020 to December 2022 with 10 or more Steam-purchase reviews in their first 12 months, the population of our study of credit changes. 5,854 of them appear in both records below.

The old names come from the first version of the FronkonGames Steam Games Dataset on Hugging Face, uploaded April 6, 2023 and read from Steam’s store data. Today’s names were read from Steam’s store API on October 9, 2026. We compared them after ignoring case, accents, punctuation and spacing, and classified all 121 changes by hand. Across all 12,948 games in both records, with no review cutoff, 253 (2.0%) changed.

The search test ran on October 22, 2026, in the US store in English, for the old and new names of all 121 games, on the suggestions under the search box (up to 10 games) and the full results page (the first 25). A game counted as found when it appeared anywhere in those results.

Dates and reasons come from each game’s official Steam announcements, also read on October 22. A rename counted as dated when a post stated the change or launched under the new name.

The limits: the old dataset doesn’t record when each game was read, so the window is at least three and a half years and longer for most games, and we can’t date most changes. Today’s name is the English store name, so an added English name counts as a change, as it does for Valve. Search results vary by day, region and language. Developers who announced their renames may differ from those who didn’t. The data and code are kept with the rest of our Steam research.