Missing author names on title page if shortauthor is empty

[samcarter]

Currently, your titlepage uses the following test for author names:

    %    \end{macrocode}
    %
    % Beamer's definition of |\insertauthor| is always nonempty, so we have
    % to test another macro initialized by |\author{...}| to see if the user has
    % defined an author. This solution was suggested by Enrico Gregorio in an
    % answer to \href{https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/241306/}{this
    % Stack Exchange question}.
    %
    %    \begin{macrocode}
    \ifx\beamer@shortauthor\@empty\else\usebeamertemplate*{author}\fi

This will cause author names to be missing on the title page if the short author is empty, e.g. \author[]{Name}.

Beamer now uses something like this:

https://github.com/josephwright/beamer/blob/1b04c51a596a51530adeff278ca2c43aa963c9b1/base/themes/inner/beamerinnerthemeinmargin.sty#L68-L74

So in your case:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{moloch}

\author[]{names}

\makeatletter
\setbeamertemplate{title page}{
  \begin{minipage}[b][\textheight]{\textwidth}
    \ifx\inserttitlegraphic\@empty\else\usebeamertemplate*{title graphic}\fi
    \vfill%
    \ifx\inserttitle\@empty\else\usebeamertemplate*{title}\fi
    \ifx\insertsubtitle\@empty\else\usebeamertemplate*{subtitle}\fi
    \usebeamertemplate*{title separator}
    \expandafter\ifblank\expandafter{\beamer@andstripped}{}{%
      \usebeamertemplate*{author}%
    }
    \ifx\insertinstitute\@empty\else\usebeamertemplate*{institute}\fi
    \ifx\insertdate\@empty\else\usebeamertemplate*{date}\fi
    \vfill
    \null
  \end{minipage}% <- missing %
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\end{document}

(note: this new test caused a problem if combined with the usepdftitle=false class option. This has since been fixed in the beamer dev version, but it is not yet released to ctan, it should be included in beamer v3.72 or newer)

[jolars]

Thanks for the report!