5 Reasons Why You Should Start Using a VPN for Gaming

Between DDoS attackers and greedy ISPs, innocent game players can no longer catch a break. One moment, you’re casually roaming around and planning your strategy. The next, your system is forced offline by some sore loser you’d beaten the night before or your ISP’s “altruistic” bandwidth throttling.

It’s already a matter of staying safe.

Hailed as an effective security measure all over cyberspace, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is also a foolproof solution for vulnerable gaming systems. By securing your online data and privacy, a VPN helps to provide a fast, uninterrupted, and fun gaming experience. And what more can a gamer wish for?

 

1. A VPN Hides You from Your ISP’s Curious Eyes

Bandwidth throttling is supposed to enable ISPs to equally divide their users’ internet speed so that everyone could get a piece of the action. In theory, it happens when your network is close to being congested. In practice, bandwidth throttling is initiated when an ISP needs more of your money.

Whatever the reason, you end up with capped speed. Limited bandwidth is especially frustrating when you’re playing live-action games against your competitive friends. It can ruin an exciting Friday night, but you can stop it. A VPN encrypts your online traffic, rendering it invisible to your grabby ISP.

 

2. It Also Protects You from DDoS Attacks

You might remember when Dota 2 was still in closed beta back in 2013, and the only way to catch a glimpse of how it looked was to follow G-1. If you remember this, then you also remember that in 2013 Chinese eSports League was forced to suspend matches because their systems were DDoS-attacked.

DDoS opportunities have grown since then. Some five years later, anyone can buy DDoS services and use a compromised system to force you offline. A VPN can protect you against this threat, too. It does that by hiding your IP address and keeping your network connection free of unwanted traffic.

 

3. VPN Can Decrease Ping Times and Lag

Why should you lag behind other players only because you’re physically further from the gaming server than they are? That doesn’t seem fair. It is the way the internet works, however – the further your device is from a server, the more time it takes for data to be sent and picked up by your device.

This is called ping time. It can be really annoying while you’re enjoying a game. You can’t get closer to the system physically since that would require you to become a gaming nomad, but you can trick the system into believing that you’re playing from another place. For that, you need a VPN server.

 

4. You Can Enjoy Games Anywhere You Are

VPN allows you to defy physical boundaries by encrypting your IP address and lending you a different one. If you’re playing from Serbia, for instance, but the gaming server is in China, a VPN will make you appear as if you were located in Beijing. With a VPN, you can finally play your favorite games anywhere.

Not only this will solve the problem you have with geo-locked games, but it will also allow you to play newly released games days before they can be accessed in your country. A VPN increases the multi-platform experience too with apps available on the go. It can make you a master gamer on Android.

 

5. With VPN, You Can Circumvent All Bans

You can apply the same VPN trick if your country decides to ban a game you really want to play. It’s not difficult for governments to think up all kinds of reasons for banning exciting games from our countries. But a simple VPN service can help you circumvent that by masking your device’s IP address.

Do you know another ban you can bypass by encrypting where and who you are? Thanks to VPN, angry admins can no longer keep you on the bench because your gameplay is simply too good. They can ban you all they want, but they could never forbid you from reconnecting through a different VPN server.

A VPN for games is called GPN, as in Gamers Private Network, but these two protocols are essentially the same – they mask your data and keep you safe from attacks. If you’re anything like the rest of our friends from the gaming community, you’ll love VPN for its ability to unlock new, thrilling adventures.

That said, the main reason for using a VPN for gaming is simple.

You just can’t play in an open world without being able to explore every corner.