You must have come across a lot of advertisements for VPN (virtual private network) services when browsing the web or watching movies online. You will see many services that advertise using VPNs to play games faster. While it’s a bit annoying, it’s undeniable that VPNs are everywhere these days, thanks in part to its focus on improving user privacy and security.
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VPNs have always appealed to gamers with their promises of privacy protection and improved performance. Is that true? Let’s find out with me. VPN and Tor both help with anonymitybut the way VPN works is completely different.
VPN classification
Here, I do not say that the term VPN in Network Administration is VPN site to site and VPN Client to Site. In this article, I talk about the nature of using VPN.
There are basically two types of VPNs that you will encounter. The first is a corporate VPN that you get through your company. These VPNs are encrypted tunnels that allow you to connect to a corporate network to access private resources like documents or a website’s backend. That is, the network computer will connect to the company’s LAN.
The second type is a consumer VPN, which is what you usually see in advertisements. This type of VPN is also an encrypted tunnel, but this time it is different, it connects securely to the server and redirects out to the Internet. As the Internet looks at it, the VPN server is your PC. Thus, your real location will be protected.
VPNs like these are great if you want to watch US-only Netflix shows while you’re in Europe. A VPN is also useful if you’re using a public Wi-Fi network at a coffee shop or airport and want to secure your connection, preventing your Wi-Fi carrier from tracking your traffic.
However, gaming is another matter.
Can a VPN Protect You From DDoS Attacks?
The number one reason that gamers, or gamer consultants, recommend using a VPN to play games and keep gamers safe. There are some games that use peer-to-peer technology to make networking on multiplayer games faster. In that case, sometimes someone else can discover the opponent’s IP address
IP addresses are like home addresses, but for computers and routers on the internet. If you know the IP address of another device, you can try to connect to that device. The bad guys use this information to perform denial of service (ddos) attacks, crashing computers using that IP address by sending so much internet traffic that the connection lags. It is very easy to hire botnets to carry out DDoS attacks, making your chances of getting a DDoS attack very high (as long as you have the target IP address).
DDoS attacks are a daily experience for major internet companies like Amazon and Google, as well as servers run by game companies and some VPN services. However, this is not something your home internet can easily tolerate — hence the need for a VPN. If you become the target of a DDoS attack while connected to a VPN, you may still be disconnected, but reconnecting won’t be a problem as your real IP is not affected.
Looking around the internet, you can easily see that a lot of people are afraid of being attacked by DDoS while playing games. Check the forums of any online game, and you’ll also find DDoS concerns, including Games like: CSGO, Overwatch, Call of Duty, Destiny 2, and League of Legends.
Those fears are all well-founded, and players hope game makers will do whatever it takes to prevent DDoS attacks, as Bungie did for Destiny 2 in early 2020. For most games, the bigger fear is that someone will hack the company’s servers and try to take the game offline that way, like World of Warcraft in late 2019. is hacked, the VPN will be completely unable to do anything to make the game normal, since the server is the game’s server and not your Internet connection.
There is still another way for you to get a DDoS attack not through the game itself but from everything around it. For example, if someone starts chatting with you, they get your IP on several platforms. Players can also try to lure you to a website or chat room they control to find your IP address. These types of attacks are not common. But in general, if you get an unsolicited chat request before or right after a game, don’t be fooled.
You don’t really need a VPN to fend off DDoS attacks when gaming these days, but there are exceptions. If you think you’ve been hit by a DDoS attack while playing a game, check to see if others have had a similar experience and what you did on your machine that led to the attack. Read the game developer’s forums and support pages to see if this is an issue.
Does a VPN make gaming faster?
Another reason why gamers prefer a VPN is that it gives better performance if they use a VPN server near the location of the game’s server. But this almost never succeeds, as VPNs don’t provide the same bandwidth speeds as an internet connection. That means ping will be high and network performance will be worse when connecting via VPN — unless there are other circumstances where a VPN can improve performance.
For example, if your internet service provider is throttling gaming connections but not VPN throttling, a VPN can boost your performance. If you’re connecting over a public Wi-Fi network that blocks game connections but allows VPN connections, you can use a VPN to bypass that limitation and connect to the game server.
Another use case is when you want to play in a different region, such as Europe or Asia. If this is a game with friends, check to make sure the game won’t automatically connect you to any region. For region-locked games, make sure that hopping around regions with a VPN won’t get you kicked out of the game.
Finally, bypass the IP filters at the university or corporate firewall. Trying to get around your company’s firewall to play games is a terrible, terrible idea that could cost you your job. For students, a better option would be to talk to the school’s IT department. Sometimes they don’t try to block the game, they are afraid that the game will affect your learning.
So, should you VPN for gaming?
A VPN service is a great tool for anonymity and takes advantage of an intermediary server to avoid bandwidth squeeze. But do you need a VPN to play games? The answer is no.
You certainly don’t need it for full protection or performance issues for all your online games, but in some cases it’s useful.
Before paying for a VPN account, do some research to see if your game uses the peer-to-peer network protocol or chat platform you’re using and then see what the developers are doing to prevent DDoS attacks. And whether you need a VPN to access websites or servers that are blocked by your carrier.
