Can I reuse a username which belongs to a deactivated account?

I'm just curious and please tell me an answer to this simple question. Thanks.

No because they would have to wipe that player's archive to do it and that would have cascading effects on everyone else they have ever played.

Haven't you ever seen "It's a Wonderful Life" ?

Or The Butterfly Effect?

Or "The Matrix" ?

Or Back to the Future?

Or Groundhog Day?

Or Lilo and Stitch?

Or Land of the Lost

I see. I guess wiping the player's archieve is a bit taxing,though.

However,what if the account is very old?

Okay, obviously you haven't seen a single one of these movies

I tried to, but to no avail. Just think. If a human dies, he no longer lives, but his actions when he was alive leave an impact on others' life. Now if you erased his life, the world would change because you'll have to reverse his life's effects. In the same way, erasing a player who doesn't exist anymore (on the internet in that very account) would affect the players he had played because their games will be erased, his comments on the forums will have to be erased and all his activities will finish. So, you cannot use another person's username. Hope it helps!

Or Virgin at 40? Who hasnt seen that.

Or Vanilla Sky

Sometime it is done. Just have to open a ticket and ask. They don't wipe the account, just rename it. Not sure if anyone has ever come back after that but they should be able to logon with their email.

I wouldn't even open this can of worms, or you're going to have all those TrollU peeps begging to rename themselves by their most "famous" monikers again...

An account that has been closed by staff isn't likely one that will be allowed for reuse. I also don't know how likely it is, just that it has happened before.

I can confirm that it is possible. I changed my name to WeLearnChess to match my blog, but the username was taken by some old dead account. Support staff changed it for me. Probably it depends if the account has been abandoned and for how long--I'm not sure what their criteria are. You don't lose anything by asking. Just remember that the Chess.com terms say you can only change your username once. 

Yes, you are only supposed to change your username one time.  If the new name you want is in use by an account that hasn't logged in since 2009, we might be able to change it for you by freeing up the old username.  Obviously, we just change the other account's username to something else to free it up; we wouldn't give a new person an old account