Using a VPN is something that many gamers are now doing, and there are various good reasons for this. It’s mostly about the fact that players value their privacy in a world that constantly tries to force them to expose their personal details. On the other hand, if you have a serious gaming habit, having more control over your connection can be very beneficial.
There are numerous VPN services on the market today, some aimed at gamers, and others with a more general-purpose approach to their service. If you’ve never purchased a VPN subscription before, it’s important to know to which key features you should be paying attention.
Latency
Lag is the number one enemy of online gamers and using the wrong type of VPN service can make your gameplay a lot worse. On the other hand, picking one with an appropriate exit node can sometimes reduce your latency, contrary to what you’d expect. That’s because some game servers will adjust their transfer rates according to your virtual location. So tricking them into thinking that you’re closer might get you better speeds.
Some people use VPN services to prevent their games from lagging. That way their connections can’t be throttled, be it by their ISP or anyone else. At least not for the specific reason that they’ve been gaming – nobody will be able to tell the difference between that and regular browsing.
Exit Points
As we mentioned above, picking a good exit node is important when using a VPN service. And by extension, a good VPN service should offer you plenty of different exit nodes in a variety of locations around the world. You probably won’t use all of them but pay attention to countries that you might have a specific interest in with regards to your gaming.
This can also be useful when you want to benefit from local discounts or similar deals. Just make sure that you’re not violating any conditions of the gaming platforms that you’re using in those cases.
Potential IP Bans
Poorly run VPN services use a small number of IP addresses and rotate them between their users. The result is that you’ll often find yourself in situations where you’re banned from some website, although you’ve never even touched it before.
This can happen if you use the IP address of someone else who’s been banned from that website in the past. Unfortunately, it can affect your online experience in a very negative way. There are many cases of people getting their accounts banned because they’ve had the bad luck of sharing an IP address with a budding teenage hacker. If you don’t want to find yourself in that situation, you’ll want to make sure that you don’t use any sketchy VPN services.
Traffic Limitations
Some VPN providers put a limit on the amount of data you can transfer over a day, week, month, and so on. These traffic limits can sometimes hit gamers hard, as they’re the ones that have to download many gigabytes of data when a major new update is released.
Finding yourself without VPN in the middle of your subscription because you failed to read the fine print can leave you with a sour taste in your mouth. So you should research these conditions before signing up for any specific service.
Customer Support
That brings us to another very important point which, unfortunately, often gets overlooked. If all goes well, you’ll never have to use the VPN provider’s customer support. But in case you do, you’ll want to make sure that you’re working with someone who takes their job seriously. Few things are worse than the helpless feeling of having a problem and seeing that nobody cares about it. This often happens with low-grade VPN services that try to cut corners wherever they can.
So take the time to compare available offers and don’t go for the cheapest possible deal. If you do your research beforehand, your new VPN subscription will bring you many months of great use. And it shouldn’t take you long to realize the numerous benefits that come attached with a service like this either. There’s a reason why so many people use a VPN on a daily basis now. Gamers are a big part of that crowd and will likely continue to have an active presence.
