This morning, a couple of GameRevolution staff members discovered that their PSN Avatars had mysteriously gone missing after booting up the PS4. Replaced with the default smiley face famously seen denoting the “Friends” section, it appears that reports of this irksome PSN issue have been rolling in since back in 2016. If you’ve been affected by the PS4 Avatar missing bug as well, try not to worry; there’s a very simple fix and we’re here to share it.
Why has my PS4 Avatar disappeared?
You’ll know if your PSN Avatar has disappeared as soon as you boot up the PS4 and find yourself presented with the initial user selection screen. In place of your chosen PS4 Avatar will be a square icon with a smiley face, which is likely to take you by surprise and potentially even cause some immediate concern.
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There’s nothing to worry about, though — your profile hasn’t been banned, hacked, or deleted despite the fact that these thoughts might run through your head. Instead, you’ve simply fallen victim to a bizarre glitch of unknown origin that, thankfully, it takes almost no time to fix.
How to get your PS4 Avatar back
- Boot up the PlayStation 4 console
- Highlight and select the affected profile
- From the Home screen, navigate to and select the “Profile” option
- Navigate to and select the three dots (“…”) option beside “Set Online Status”
- Select “Edit Profile” from the list
- Navigate to and select the “Avatar” option
- Select a new (or the same) Avatar
- Select “Confirm”
Your PS4 Avatar will now revert back to displaying correctly. As previously mentioned, it isn’t clear what causes this issue. We’ve seen it happen to profiles from different regions and with different selected Avatars, both free and premium.
