The online gaming industry has grown considerably in the past decade. While the nineties and early-2000s were dominated by consoles such as the Nintendo 64, Game Cube, Play Station, and even the Wii, among others, our generation of children are using their Smart TVs, computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones to play online titles thanks to the development of the Internet.
Today’s youth (and event some adults, too!) are sitting in front of their devices with a headset and a microphone, talking in real-time to strangers located thousands of miles away as they fight together to accomplish or complete a mission.
However, the Internet is full of risks and security hazards, so users need to be as protected as they can be. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) can offers online security and privacy thanks to its encryption properties and capabilities. It is an indispensable tool for online gamers around the globe.
VPN for online gaming: a necessity
VPNs are apps that implement protocols – such as OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec, SSTP, or IKEv2, just to name a few – with the intention of creating a virtual tunnel for the user’s shared online content and location details (IP address) to travel safely to remote servers, effectively encrypting the communication and eliminating the odds of external agents having access to it.
In short, these VPN apps help customers achieve privacy and anonymous browsing. The data is kept away from Internet Service Providers, hackers, governmental and intelligence agencies, online advertisers, and more.
Using a VPN for gaming is an excellent idea. For starters, it helps keep dangerous hackers at bay while also providing protection from in-game offences, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. A reliable, efficient VPN will also have numerous servers and countries available for connection, which means that more titles will be obtainable internationally.
How to pick the best VPN for gaming
However, you need to know how to pick up your best and most compatible VPN for gaming. If you choose an unreliable or ineffective brand, you will end up with high ping times, a lot of lag, unsteady performance, and poor encryption.
Here are the most critical factors to consider at the time of picking up the right VPN for gaming:
Latency or ping:
In the gaming industry, latency is everything. It is, by far, the most important factor when looking for the right VPN provider. The term, also known as ping, is the time that it takes the game to understand and execute your command. Basically, it is the delay experienced as the information travels from your device to the gaming server.
Typically, it is understood that the lower ping time is, the better for gameplay performance. This concept has been largely responsible of gaming failures and losses: imagine if you see your enemy right in front of you, but thanks to latency, you miss your shot, and you get killed instead.
Now, the VPN technology is more prone to increase latency than it is to decrease it. However, the very best brands can maintain or improve performance in this regard. For example, SurfShark and its amazing speeds can reduce ping time, and that is why gamers everywhere love it.
DDoS protection:
Malicious people playing online, as well as bad losers, tend to get revenge in the most creative, yet evil ways. Just when you are about to conquer that level you were struggling with, or right about to score the winning goal to lift the World Cup, you could suffer the dreaded Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
A DDoS attack consists on an intentional attempt from an online user to overload another person’s system by sending several simultaneous requests or increasing traffic, effectively congesting the victim’s network and affecting game play performance by destroying data or entering a system.
A good VPN will be able to encrypt your traffic and hide your IP number, making you extremely difficult to track online. If you are able to achieve this level of privacy and anonymity, the chances of suffering a DDoS attack are very low.
Compatibility:
The more devices and operating systems your gaming VPN is compatible with, the better it is for your playing experience, as you will have more options for encryption and protection while enjoying a wide array of titles.
Imagine that you own a PC, a macOS computer, an Android tablet, and an iPhone. If you like online gaming, then the four devices will surely be full of titles, and you want to be able to protect your gaming experience in all four gadgets. The same happens with a gaming console: if you own one, you need a VPN with a smooth installation process for routers,
The best VPNs in the market are compatible with Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, routers, and Linux, at the very least.
Speeds:
Speed is not the same as ping time. It refers to the overall rates with which your VPN-encrypted protection moves along. It is widely understood that VPN technology slows down Internet connection by a small percentage.
However, there are a few brands that can guarantee a smooth performance, as the user won’t feel a speed reduction with or with the active encryption. SurfShark is one of the few VPN companies that can claim to offer those rates.
Speed is not the most relevant measure or factor to pick up the best VPN for gaming. However, knowing that your performance isn’t going to suffer while gaming is a nice thing to have.
Number of servers and countries:
The more servers a VPN has, the better for gamers, as they can choose and switch around in their quest for better speeds and more stable performance.
As far as the number of countries available for connection, a high number would mean that the customer would have more titles and locations to choose from when acquiring online games around the world.
If you can only to connect to Germany and France with your VPN provider, you would only be capable of playing games from those two countries. However, if you choose a VPN with 50 nations, it would mean that titles from those nation states would become available to you.
Security and Encryption:
If you are trying to fend off hackers and vengeful players trying to perform DDoS attacks, you will need to protect your online privacy with strong measures and protocols.
The AES 256-bit encryption is the industry’s gold standard. Anything below would instantly mean online vulnerability.
Conclusion
In conclusion, online gaming is one of the trendiest activities that the Internet hosts. People from all over the world use their computers and mobile devices to play all types of titles, from mission-based adventures to sports and multiplayer battle competitions.
VPNs are encryption apps that can enhance your online gaming experience. They can help you avoid DDoS attacks, decrease latency, and ensure you can have access to titles from a lot of countries and places. You just need to know how to pick the best ones. SurfShark is quickly shaping up as one of the most speedy and reliable for Internet games.
