Can a VPN help gaming?
There are a lot of privacy and security related news stories popping up about the internet as of late. With all this concern about data sharing and spying, many gamers are probably wondering if their favourite game services or online marketplaces are still safe from malware attacks and tracking activities.
Luckily, there are many resources out there to help alleviate some of these concerns. More and more gamers are turning towards services like TorGuardVPN in order to make their online gaming more safe and secure.
So the question you probably have is, how can a VPN help with gaming?
What gamers really need
There are a few specific challenged with gaming and gaming services that can be mitigated by using a VPN. The most obvious challenge is that gamers frequently make online purchases, and access networks that may be unsafe.
There’s also lag; many gamers have a hard time playing multiplayer games due to their geographic location, or the quality of their local internet providers. Many online games and game marketplaces are also region-controlled, and won’t allow players to participate if they’re accessing the game from certain countries.
There’s also the issue of competitive gaming and e-sports. Many players face threats of DDoS attacks or other malicious cheating activity during training and competitions.
So, now that we know the kinds of challenges that gamers face in this regard, let’s take a closer look at how a VPN can help with these factors, and which VPN is the best for gaming.
What a good VPN can do for you
A VPN, or virtual private network, tunnels your connection and activity through a proprietary network of servers designed to keep your activity secure and relatively anonymous. There are a few advantages that this can provide for gaming, so let’s take a look and see what a good VPN can do for you!
First of all, a decent VPN, such as NordVPN, will be able to effectively anonymize your traffic, and secure it against any spying or malicious activity. This is nice for players that frequently make online purchases, or who regularly game over public networks. Having your payment info stolen or your gaming account hacked over public wifi can be a huge bummer.
The second important advantage that a VPN might be able to give you is that they might be able to cut down on lag! If you’re in an area with a relatively slow connection, or your ISP has a habit of throttling your traffic, you can avoid these challenges by employing a VPN to potentially give you a faster connection.
This has the added bonus of making it possible to change your geographic location. If you want to play games that aren’t available for players in your area, or if you want to play a game while travelling in a restricted country, a VPN can help you do this, as well.
When it comes to competitive gaming and e-sports, there can potentially be a lot riding on the outcome of a gaming match. With so much at stake, it’s definitely a good idea to protect against things like DDoS attacks that can happen between competitive teams or organizations.
These kinds of attacks disrupt connections, causing lag or even service failure, and can pose a serious risk to a player’s training time or performance in a tournament. Using a VPN can mitigate or even completely safeguard against these kinds of attacks, allowing players to focus on winning those matches.
Now that we know what kinds of things a VPN can do to help our situation, what kinds of things make up a good VPN?
What to look for in a gaming VPN
When trying to choose between all of the different VPN services available, it’s important to keep yourself focused on the important stuff. The best VPNs can effectively safeguard your traffic and unblock lots of content, but many of the worst ones don’t perform nearly as well.
The main things to consider when looking at a VPN for gaming, are the security features, the legal jurisdiction, and the price of the service.
For security, you want to make sure that your VPN choice uses solid encryption such as AES-256. Having a secure protocol is also important, and most popular VPNs use the OpenVPN protocol.
Having good security features means that the VPN will be effective for keeping your connection private and making sure you aren’t being targeted by any malicious activity.
Another important thing to consider is the legal jurisdiction that your VPN service falls under. Some countries have strict laws restricting VPN usage, and there are a number of far-reaching intelligence alliances between some major countries that share user data.
The last thing you’ll want to keep in mind is price since gaming is already a relatively expensive hobby, you’ll definitely want a good balance between price and functionality.
So which VPN should I go with?
This will largely depend on you, but we’ve found the VPN that best matches these criteria is ExpressVPN. This is a widely popular and well-regarded VPN solution known for its security and effective speeds, as well as their low prices.
A good free alternative for gaming is Tunnelbear. This is an exceptionally easy-to-use VPN solution that offers a free version and is effective for use while gaming.
The editorial unit
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