Demonstrating some of the problems of running a social network not based on real identity, Apple has decided to tweak its Game Center platform.

It's still based on user generated gamer tags (effectively whatever name you want to give yourself), but now when you send and receive friend requests, the real name associated with that iTunes account is used.

That's not my name

The official change to Apple's Terms & Conditions for iOS 4 explains it thus:

"We have changed the Game Center terms and conditions to provide you notice that if you send a friend invitation, the full name associated with your Apple ID will be shared with the recipient. If you accept a friend invitation, the full name associated with your Apple ID will be shared with the sender."

It's an obvious shift to make in terms of improving the transparency of the system, although clearly it doesn't work retrospectively in terms of your existing friends. 

Equally, within your Game Center friends list, only game tags are listed, so there's no permanent association between real and invented identities.

And anyway, if they so desire, users can manually edit the message before sending it, and removing their real name from the entire process.