Why do I have to change my username?

As part of our November 2019 User Portal update, we are requiring users with invalid characters in their username to select a new one. Users affected by this change will see the following message when signing in to the new portal for the first time.

Why is this happening?

Several years ago, we stopped allowing users to enter symbols, spaces and other non-alphanumeric characters in their usernames when registering a new account. At the time, we did not ask our existing userbase to update their usernames as this would be inconvenient and many users had been using these - now invalid - usernames since the early days of Nexus Mods. Unfortunately, with the latest evolution of our login service, we can no longer allow these characters to be part of your sign in name as we look to improve the quality and reliability of our user data. 

We understand this is not great news for those of you who are fond of your current username and sincerely apologise for the inconvenience. This change was bound to become inevitable from the point we originally changed our username policy. We would like to thank you for your understanding and patience during this transition and invite you to contact support@nexusmods.com if you have any problems when updating your username.

Which characters can I use in my username? 

Usernames must be alphanumeric, meaning they can only contain letters from the ISO basic Latin alphabet and/or numbers. You can no longer include spaces, accented characters or any other symbols.