If you ever searched for a guide about the best VPN for gaming, you will find content that does not make sense, but that is written entirely with SEO in mind. A VPN being “multiplatform” isn’t actually a reason for you to need a VPN for gaming. In this guide, we are talking about why you might need the best VPN (or any VPN for that matter) for gaming because not everybody needs it in the first place, followed by how to set it up on every platform.
Whether it’s China not allowing certain American platforms that certain games require. Or whether it's the US placing sanctions on Iran, resulting in American productions not being available in Iran, the best VPN for gaming will be able to solve the issue.
Although, in theory, most VPN services should be able to solve the issue, depending on the level of censorship in the country where the game you want to play doesn’t work. And unfortunately, sanctions and censorship tend to come in pairs.
Blocks due to sanctions are very easy to bypass. Those are the issues that often don’t require the best VPN for gaming and can be solved with almost any VPN service out there.
Why? As gaming companies want you to play games. It’s essential for them that you do. But they also need to follow the law so that they don’t get in trouble. And due to that, they put geo-blocks that do prevent you from playing games, but that is also easily passable, provided a VPN service has servers in regions where the game isn’t blocked.
If this were Hulu, you’d need to read an entire guide about it. However, it’s not. That’s why you don’t need the best VPN for gaming to bypass this kind of a geo-block.
Censorship often means that your country also has a ban on VPN services. The effectiveness of such a ban? It depends on the country. China is extremely good at it, for instance, as it’s impossible to run a standard VPN there.
The best VPN for gaming in countries like China? It’s a VPN that runs Stealth VPN, and that’s for anything whether gaming or not. Something that PrivateVPN comes with.
See, VPN services are easily detectable as VPN services because their traffic doesn’t blend in with regular traffic. Something that Stealth VPN fixes. If your VPN has such an option, it’s the best VPN for gaming for you, as it will be able to bypass the government as well as any sanctions.
Have you ever wondered how is it that you are paying a premium price for your internet, and on paper do have a great connection, but when it comes down to it, your game while at one point may be perfectly fine, at other becomes completely unplayable?
It’s called Internet throttling, and whether you heard of it or not, if you play games or overall use a lot of internet, you most were affected by it more than once in the past.
Internet throttling is something providers do to “minimize congestion” with ironically creates congestion, for you, as an individual, that needs the internet the most.
Most providers are able to do it as most countries lack the right laws to prevent it, and if you were ever wondering how come a game that is working superbly out of a sudden is unplayable for a series of minutes, in most cases it’s not the servers of the game but your internet provider using internet throttling.
If you invest in a super expensive router, you can actually bypass the issue as some routers like from AmpliFI can switch between bandwidth lanes and bypass the problem, but is it worth spending over $300 for that cause when a VPN can bypass throttling too by fooling your internet provider?
Perhaps try it for yourself with PrivateVPN. Risk-free. Registration takes just a few seconds, and we don’t even ask for your name.
It comes with a variety of servers, but also with the right balance of quality.
And that’s why no free VPN services is an option if you do need a VPN for gaming. A free VPN service won’t speed up your gaming as while it might help with internet throttling, the servers from the service won’t be able to provide the speed you desire, and after all, they are free, so you can’t have any expectations.
PrivateVPN? It’s not free, but it does offer the already mentioned risk-free 7-day trial that is probably the simplest 7-day trial that you will ever deal with. And after that? People love the value we provide.
What’s more important when it comes to VPN services for gaming? Quality or quantity? A bit of both, with a higher need for quality.
Ultimately, if a service only has 3 or so server locations, it’s not worth having because you won’t be able to connect to a server that’s the closest to you which will result in your games not being of highest speed either.
At the same time, having 3,000 servers is not needed, if they all aren’t of consistent quality.
Many providers buy internet capacity from hosting companies rather than IP transit providers directly. That’s for sure a lot cheaper and allows for more servers, but increases latency and lowers download speeds.
The best VPN for gaming? It’s the one that has enough servers for no one to be too far away from a server to a point, while at the same coming with internet capacity from IP transit providers directly. If you are missing one of these, the VPN that you are using isn’t the best VPN for gaming and won’t offer you the full advantages of a VPN when it comes to internet throttling as you will have to deal with something else slowing you down anyway.
PrivateVPN? It offers a balance of everything. You don’t get thousands of servers, but you get servers that focus on quality to make sure your latency is as low as possible from the perspective of server quality and distance to you.
If you already checked our site, then you noticed that we have an Android and iOS app. You also noticed that we work with Windows, macOS, and even Linux devices. What you probably didn’t notice is any information about how to set up a VPN on your PS4, Xbox or even the Nintendo Switch.
And that’s because VPN services don’t work with these platforms. No VPN services do.
That’s something that we would love to do at PrivateVPN considering how many people use these platforms, but currently, that is not possible.
What can you do instead to get use a VPN for gaming anyway? Install a VPN on your router. We cover the process on that on our site which we do recommend you check out. It will help you make VPN services work on platforms that don’t allow for VPN services directly.
The best VPN for gaming, though? It’s not the one that allows for “multiplatform” connections. You can use PrivateVPN with 6 different devices at any given time, and it won’t have an issue. We don’t talk about it heavily on our blogs because we don’t believe that it’s a feature. It’s something that every VPN provider should be providing considering how many devices we use these days.
For people with censorship, the best VPN for gaming is the one that comes with Stealth VPN. For those without it, any VPN will do. And for everyone else looking to play games without internet throttling? A mix of quality and quantity matters.
But are you only looking for a VPN for gaming or do you also want to access entertainment? If you also want to watch Hulu, DAZN, Hotstar or some other platform that currently doesn’t work in your country, we most likely have a guide for it on our blog that goes through how to unblock these platforms step-by-step.
Written by Michael Smolski.