"char" is a valid username

[jomo]

This guy named "baumans" changed their name to "Char": https://api.mojang.com/user/profiles/f2e9994f94934e08974e2f4b7f7843ea/names

That makes char a valid username. They also have a valid skin: http://skins.minecraft.net/MinecraftSkins/Char.png

You might want to change the default skin name to "Steve", that's not taken and I guess Mojang prevents people from using that name.

This is going to be a breaking change and I'm not sure how you can solve it properly.

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You could, of course, keep it as it is, but then the user char would never see their avatar.

[jomo]

Seems like not many things are using the "char" hardcoded.

[LukeHandle]

What a pain. I'm inclined to change the hardcoded name to "Steve" as you say because it more accurately reflects the Steve vs. Alex characters, but then again, a single user who has a Steve skin vs. a few websites which are still relying char.

I think if we can be sure that Steve is unobtainable by players as a name it makes more sense to begin a transition to it and possibly in X months we can remove the char override.

[jomo]

yes. I mean no

[LukeHandle]

The solution being then "MHF_Steve" as the username which we can safely guarantee is and will stay correct. Still feel sad about getting rid of char...

[jomo]

Yep. That's what we will do at Crafatar, too (crafatar/crafatar#142).
Also note there is a slight difference between the original 'char' and the 'steve' avatar (char has a stronger beard).

[LukeHandle]

We switched to the new one (without beard) back here minotar/minecraft#2 And yeah, I think I'll add some tracking for char, I can't see us ever fully deprecating it though. I'm expecting the majority of requests are for Steve by a long way and not for the legacy user.