I understand this post is from sometime ago, but this REALLY should be changed.
Think about your competitors and the much much better way that they handle usernames.
Steam requires a unique username, but allows any displayname that you want.
Battlenet allows any displayname you want too and then simply associated a unique number with each players account.
Do you understand how frustrating it is to have the same username across platforms only to see it taken on Origin and be unable to fix it in an elegant way? (such as putting an underscore between words, etc).
This system is just terrible. Not to mention how silly it is that names that seemingly contain "Eagle" are banned too? What on earth -- it just makes me want to abandon the platform and use better ones.
Frankly your comment that "this is working as intended" and "_" isn't unique enough of an identity is baffling to me -- why do you believe a number or "leet" style text makes something more unique in an acceptable way while an underscore or special character does not? That's just your opinion on how you prefer it to work -- if you just don't want to put in the dev time then admit it, but don't lie with such an obviously terrible argument.
Origin does usernames worse than almost every single other PC gaming steam-style platform, that's the truth and you should fix it. And fix it without borking the whole thing like Blizzard did by charging people money to change their usernames. And people wonder why everyone prefers Steam smh -- it's obvious if you're an actual user.
