I’ve accepted a job in China and will be moving there in late summer. I am an avid gamer, and have been my whole life. This is the first time I’ll be working overseas. For any of you that have relocated to China in the last few years and love gaming as much as I do ( Battlenet, LoL, PSN and Xbox), what was your experience thus far?
Were you able to log into your regular accounts or were there restrictions in place?
If there were restrictions, how did you deal with this (other than the standard -use a VPN)
I would like adetailed way you’ve dealt with this issue, if possible.
Did you need to jailbreak routers? Connect consoles to PC?
Are there any ISPs that are friendlier to overseas gamers?
I am adept at using a VPN for my PC, but my main concern is how to connect my consoles if there are restrictions in place.
Any other little bits of advice or thoughts would be welcome. Thank you so much!
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Chinese companies offer “game boosters” which will speed up your connection when gaming. (These are different from a standard vpn that would tunnel all of your traffic)
If you play games competitively, you still might experience a major difference in overall enjoyment. (Going from 5-30ms pings when playing a competitive game to say… 100-300ms makes a huge difference ofc)
Downloading and playing single player games from Steam is absolutely no issue. GOG and Epic stores can get a bit wacky at times. Sometimes I have to authenticate my account 3-4-5 times just to connect to Epic’s platform.
I’d suggest trying the game boosters before you mess with your router. Reworking the firmware on your router works, but some ISPs will cut off your internet because they think you’re running a telecom scam of some sort. (This has happened to a few of my friends)
https://www.xunyou.com/ this is a program that helps with connection. It has game/program specific options. You can use it with consoles too, I assume connected through pc… New MW2 can’t connect on Chinese internet, through a VPN I was getting 300+ ping, with this program its around 60… Definitely get VIP, it’s like 200元 a year. You can download it first and check out the games list.
BattleNet used to work perfectly because Blizzard had a dedicated Chinese client.
I played SC2 on there ranked ladder and you were playing against others inside China, so latency was excellent.
Blizzard have recently pulled out of China so I don’t know how that has affected it (I stopped playing several years ago).
One to look at is Nintendo. I’ve had a WiiU and a Switch in China and seem to get good connection playing online for things like Mario Kart, Splatoon, etc. (you generally get put either in the Japan or Hong Kong/S.Korea servers).
I could never get Xbox Live to work to a standard to play competitively.
Years ago, I could get into big team battle in Halo 3 and it worked okay, but as time has gone on, it’s been poor latency and connection issues (forever searching for games/hosts/players).
I also enjoy playing games, and I’m a Chinese. I think it mainly depends on how long you intend to stay in China. Because these programs can always be continuously improved.
The easiest way to do this is to use software such as a UU (UU加速器). It is completely official and legal. But for those niche online games it is difficult to fully support.
Encrypting VPN communication via software like Clash is useful when you want to enjoy full world internet service. But reliable VPN service providers in China don’t openly advertise themselves, so you’ll have a hard time finding them.
Acceleration boxes (加速盒子) will provide a lot of help in playing console games, they are hardware versions of accelerators, completely legal and public.
Soft routing (软路由) can provide full internet service WIFI experience. But more preparation is needed.
I play a lot as well, mostly console like PS5, Switch, Occulus. If you have the patients and money I was suggest setting up a dedicated router with a VPN applet. Once it’s done speeds are pretty decent and it fixes the problem for your entire house and all consoles.
You can get gameboosters in China but be aware that you need to email customer support your passport photo and information to register as the application only recognizes Chinese IDs on the registration page.
UUbooster is great. I use it on PC but they have directions for setting up consoles (all in Chinese so some help might be needed or wechat translation could work).
I played modern warfare with my friends in the US and had about 120ms latency, they have pretty much every online game I’ve looked for and update for new releases quickly. You will need to send in a scan of your passport to verify your account, but it doesn’t take long.
We have an Expat gaming community. Soon we will have active Reddit and Discord along with our WeChat currently 4k followers. Feel free to join: https://www.reddit.com/r/ExpatGamer/