Few things are as blissful in life as getting to play your favorite game to relax after a day or week of school or work. It really does wonders for your mental health.
Well, that’s if you don’t need to deal with annoying restrictions that prevent you from fully enjoying the video games you want, like:
Region Locks
While PS4 and Xbox One consoles no longer use region locks, a lot of content and apps still have them – especially DLCs. Plus, older console versions (like Xbox and Xbox 360) have region locks too.
Also, gaming servers might only work in specific geographical regions.
Censorship
Some countries outright hate video games. Australia is the best example, with a long list of censored games. Some bans have been overturned, but the unbanned games received content modifications that lower the fun factor and immersion.
And unfortunately, Australia isn’t the only country that does stuff like that.
IP Bans
If a server admin has it out for you, they can easily IP ban you, preventing you from playing on the same server until they decide to reverse the ban.
How to Easily Bypass Any Obstacle with a VPN
All you need to do is a get a VPN, download and install the app, run it, and connect to a VPN server.
That’s all it takes – the moment you connect to the server, it replaces your real IP address with its own address, making it impossible for IP bans, firewalls, and region locks to restrict your fun.
4 Other Reasons to Use a VPN for Gaming
Besides bypassing restrictions, here’s why else you should use a gaming VPN:
1. It Prevents Bandwidth Throttling
What’s bandwidth throttling?
Without getting too technical, it’s when your ISP decides to intentionally slow down your online speeds.
They usually claim they do that to prevent network congestion, but it’s also a way for them to avoid spending more money on pricier storage and bandwidth equipment. It’s also a good way to pressure you into buying pricier subscriptions or data plans.
It’s easy to see how that would be a problem when you game – all it takes is sudden lag to lose the first place.
How does a VPN prevent that?
By encrypting your traffic – it essentially makes it unreadable to anyone. And if your ISP can’t see what you’re spending their data on, they can’t selectively lower your speeds.
2. It Reduces Ping and Lag
It sounds like it’s too good to be true, but this actually works most of the time. Of course, this is the case when you’re gaming on a server that’s not in your country.
For example, if you’re from Poland, and the server is from South Korea, there’s a good chance you’ll deal with high ping and lots of lag.
Why?
Well, mostly because the traffic is routed through a lengthy path. It might leave Poland, and go through France, the US, and Japan until it reaches the server in South Korea.
But if you were to connect to a VPN server in South Korea, the route would be much more direct. At most, the traffic would leave the South Korean VPN server, and bounce through a city or two until it reaches the gaming server.
Safe to say, your connection speeds are likely to be much better that way.
3. It Protects You from DoS/DDoS Attacks
Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are when unwanted traffic and requests are sent to your network, effectively flooding it until it goes down.
In simple terms, that means someone can cut off your web access with a DoS/DDoS attack.
Why would they do that?
All it takes is one sore loser who is jealous of your skills. It might sound like fear-mongering, but when you can buy a DDoS attack for as little as $10 per hour, and keep up a week-long DDoS attack with only $150, it starts becoming more believable.
Plus, check this out – a PS4 player actually made it into the news because he was using DDoS attacks to disconnect players from the PlayStation Network.
Also, don’t forget that DDoS attacks actually targeted the PlayStation Network. If hackers aren’t shy of doing something like that, they definitely have no problem targeting random players.
Whew, pretty scary or at least annoying stuff.
Well, the good news is a gaming VPN can help with that. Since it hides your real IP address, it makes it impossible for anyone to DoS/DDoS your network since they can’t find it.
And don’t worry – most VPN providers use anti-DoS/DDoS protection.
4. It Gives You Early Access to New Games
Picture this, you're mega-hyped for a new game that gets released this weekend, got your battle station or couch all comfy and ready to go, and you even took Friday and Monday off work to maximize your game time.
Only to find out the game gets released a few days later in your area.
Rage-inducing, right?
With a VPN, that’s no longer a problem, though. It helps you quickly mask your geo-location, so you can get early access to any game you want.
How to Get the Best Gaming VPN
I’m not gonna lie – not just any VPN will do if you want to enjoy better online gaming.
If you get one with poor server optimization, no VPN protocol variety, and servers with bandwidth caps, you’re only going to deal with annoying slowdowns, buffering, and disconnects.
Doing research on the matter is going to take time, of course. You need to closely check out the features, read through the Privacy Policies and ToS pages, and test the VPN connections themselves to see what speeds you get, and to make sure there are no data leaks.
Or you could do the simpler thing and check out this list of the best VPNs for gamers. You’ll get an in-depth and easy-to-understand overview of the most popular and efficient options.
