Why does my profile consist of numbers instead of my username?

Question

On Steam, my profile is the following:

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197964085566/

Notice the numbers at the tail end of the URL. While other users also have numbers for a profile like mine, I've seen many others users with their usernames in their profile instead. It makes it a lot easier to link and remember your profile page based on a short username instead of a couple dozen integers.

Why do some users have a username in their profile instead of numbers and vice versa? Is there a way to change this?

I originally thought it was based on the age of the account since I was a pretty early adopter back on January 24, 2004, but I've seen new and old accounts with numbers and usernames.

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Update: I've since updated my profile URL so clicking the above link will renavigate to the following:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/johnjon

Answer 1

Yes, you can change this in your community profile - change the "Custom URL" field to whatever you wish the URL to end with.

Here's the step by step breakdown:

• Load the Steam Community website
• Login, if you aren't already, and make sure you're on the "Home" tab
• On the right side, under "Actions" choose "Edit my Profile"
• Click the "Profile" tab if it is not already highlighted
• Change the value for "Custom URL" - the "http://steamcommunity.com/id/" part cannot be changed.
• Click the bright green "Save" button at the bottom

Answer 2

In your steam community profile, click the Edit my Profile link.

One of the headings on the page will be Custom URL:

Once you enter text in this box and save settings, your profile will then be accessible by this URL as well as your current http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/[id]/ URL.