PCMag teamed up with IGN to run a survey on VPN usage by PC gamers. We asked 770 of our readers to tell us how and why they’re using VPNs (virtual private networks)—that all-important software that helps keep your online activity private—while playing games on PC. But some of their answers revealed that a number of gamers (and probably the rest of us) might have a fundamental misunderstanding of the kind of protection a VPN provides.
First, most respondents—78.6 percent—said they were not using a VPN while gaming. Of those who do, 58 percent said the reason is to “protect my privacy,” which is all well and good.
Several respondents clarified that they run a VPN while gaming but aren’t using it for gaming: Some just leave their VPNs on or forget to turn them off, but others have isolated their games out of the VPN. That’s possible when your VPN supports split-tunneling. According to Max Eddy, PCMag’s senior security analyst and VPN guru, split-tunneling “marks which apps send data through the VPN connection and which apps communicate in the clear.” And that’s totally fine: According to Eddy, most gamers don’t really need to use VPNs specifically for gaming.
This has to do with the way most online games are structured. A majority of the respondents, for example, play RPG/MMORPG games such as Skyrim and World of Warcraft, which facilitate multiuser play over their own online services. The privacy of the connection is essentially baked in. Using a VPN with a game like that is a hindrance, adding overhead to the connection. Issues with speed, performance, and lag in such cases are why many PC gamers eschew a VPN entirely; our colleagues at IGN will dive into that even more.
