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Using a VPN for gaming used to sound like a bad idea — gamers worried about lag, high ping, and disconnects. However, online gaming today faces problems that a VPN can solve: IP-based DDoS attacks, region-locked content, ISP throttling of game traffic, and even harassment or swatting enabled by your exposed IP. Recently, there have been cases of streamers and players being DDoS’d or even doxxed/swatted because attackers obtained their IP address. A VPN shields your real IP, making these attacks much harder. The issue has been that many so-called “gaming VPNs” were either ineffective or untrustworthy. They might advertise “gaming-optimized” servers but secretly be logging connections or using congested networks that turn a 30 ms ping into 200 ms. And some VPN services have suffered privacy failures (like IP leaks or server breaches) that undermine the whole point of using them. It’s no wonder gamers have been skeptical.
Anyone approaches gaming + VPN differently. Instead of sending your traffic through a single, centralized VPN server, your packets travel through multiple relays in a decentralized network, each operated by independent participants. This onion-style multi-hop routing keeps your real IP hidden from opponents, game servers, and even your ISP.
No single relay ever sees both who you are and where you’re going – so no one entity can log everything or target you. This is critical in competitive or toxic gaming environments: if someone tries to DDoS you or reveal your location, they’ll only hit an intermediary relay IP, not your home.
Meanwhile, your ISP can’t tell if you’re gaming or browsing, which helps prevent them from throttling your game traffic (a tactic some ISPs use during peak times or to certain services). In fact, one way to detect ISP throttling is to use a VPN and see if speeds improve – with Anyone on, your ISP likely won’t distinguish your game data from any other encrypted traffic, meaning more consistent performance.
It’s true that any VPN adds a bit of overhead – extra distance and encryption can increase ping slightly. But the key is smart routing. The Anyone network is designed to choose efficient paths for traffic. Often, gamers find that the trade-off is minimal compared to the benefits.
In some cases, using Anyone can even improve stability: for example, if your ISP has poor peering with the game server region, the decentralized route might avoid those congested points, resulting in smoother gameplay. While a bad VPN might route you halfway across the world unnecessarily, Anyone lets you tailor or automatically optimize the path.
Many “gaming VPNs” just bounce you through one fixed server (which could be overloaded with other users); Anyone’s dynamic routing avoids bottlenecks by design. Moreover, because Anyone is community-powered, there are relays all around the globe, not just a few data centers. You can often get a relay path that exits near the game server you’re targeting, minimizing additional latency.
Gaming is increasingly global, but content releases and servers are often region-restricted. With a VPN, you can appear in a different country to access new game releases early or play on servers with a different player base.
Anyone makes this easy: just select an exit relay in the region you need (where supported) and you can bypass region locks. For example, if a game update or beta is available in another country first, a VPN can let you temporarily “travel” there digitally and join in.
Unlike some VPNs that get blocked by game servers (because their IP ranges are known datacenter IPs), Anyone’s network uses residential and diverse nodes that are much harder to detect or blacklist. It means you’re more likely to successfully connect and play without the service knowing you’re on a VPN. It’s gaming without borders, as it should be.
Because Anyone is free and community-powered, you can use it as a gaming VPN on PC, console, or mobile without worrying about monthly fees or bandwidth caps. Many gamers on tight budgets resort to unsafe “free VPNs” which often come with catches (like ads, data limits, or even malware).
With Anyone, you get free, unlimited VPN protection backed by a transparent network. And you know that the network isn’t owned by a single company that might sell your data – it’s run by a community with a stake in privacy. The About the Network page explains how relays are incentivized and kept honest via decentralization and the Anyone Token. Essentially, your gameplay privacy is protected not by trust in a company, but by the open technology behind Anyone.
1. Decide where you’ll run the VPN: If you game on a PC, you can install the Anyone client directly on that machine (Windows or Mac). For consoles (like Xbox or PlayStation), you have two options – either run Anyone on a VPN router or on a PC that you turn into a gateway, then connect your console through it. Using a VPN on your router will cover any device on your network, including consoles (see our VPN for Routers guide). For mobile gaming, the Anyone mobile app (or manual configuration) can protect your phone/tablet games as well.
