Without claiming the names (they're not for me) and without adding the people who already have them as a friend.

<story>
I'm trying to get a couple old people who desperately need a hobby to try out Gwent, because they're super annoying when they're bored, and they're bored almost all the time. They're your stereotypical ancients - old, already on edge almost 24/7, possessing a hatred of all things new or technological, and they'll take any minor setback as an excuse to complain about & not touch any of this, so I need to make the process as frictionless as possible. There's no way they'll even give it a good-faith effort if they finally settle on a name just to find it's already taken.

If in-game display names didn't have to be unique and/or could be changed without moving mountains, this wouldn't be such an issue, but it is. Steam already allows you to do all of this, but whatever, that's an issue for another time.

So I need a way to pitch ideas to the artifacts while simultaneously preventing them from settling on something, just to realize it's taken and nix the entire process.
</story>

Any help would/will be appreciated. Searching/googling only brought me to an archived thread from more than six years ago.

*EDIT*
Nevermind! I'm dumb.

www.gog.com/u/USERNAME_GOES_HERE

^ It'll 404 iff they don't exist.

*EDIT*
^ That's not entirely true. See the selected answer.

$200 and it's yours. My PayPal is bad_at_avoiding_bans@legitimatemailing.address.

hehehehe, good one.

You're right! I tested with mine, but it turns out my profile wasn't as private as I'd thought. I didn't know you could enter a name without claiming it on the site - I was signing them up with their Facebook accounts (within Galaxy) because credentials scare them & that's the screen I came to when preinstalling Galaxy/Gwent for them - it wouldn't tell you in real time, and username was the only input field besides the submit button.

Thanks man!

You're welcome.