How Do P2P Games Work With a VPN? [Explained]

Playing a P2P game with a VPN means that your traffic would have to go through two virtual networks of remote devices.

Since your data has to travel more distance, should you expect more lag?

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How do P2P games work with a VPN?

When you’re playing a P2P game through a VPN, all data streams coming from your device pass through encrypted tunnels. Then, your chosen server decrypts them before sending them to your peers. The VPN hardware acts as your proxy, communicating with the rest of your P2P gaming community using its own IP address so that you can play incognito.

Now how about your ISP?

Your ISP wouldn’t be able to monitor your peer-to-peer gaming activity. It would still know that you’re consuming a ton of bandwidth, though.

Although traffic encryption is unavoidable when you use a P2P VPN, you may experience faster connection speeds. Part of it is because your ISP won’t be able to throttle your bandwidth when it doesn’t see what you’re doing online.

With so many servers to choose from, you have plenty of options to reduce latency. Most VPNs can identify and route your traffic to the fastest hardware at the time of your connection. So, no need to do the heavy lifting yourself.

Furthermore, some legit P2P VPN services have certain features gamers would love. For instance, Proton VPN, the best solution for gaming in our book, offers port forwarding, VPN Accelerator, and a large server fleet.

In terms of setup complexity, installing it is a breeze.

Let us show you how to get started. The steps will be pretty similar with other leading providers:

Summary

Now you know how P2P games work with a VPN. Connecting your device to a VPN server before you start playing accomplishes many things like increased privacy and enhanced security.

Doing so may drive down your internet connection speed because of encryption use. But if you go with a service with lag-minimizing features, you shouldn’t experience any gameplay delays.