Steam is one of the biggest–if not the biggest online game distribution platform in the world. It’s also a social network as well, where you can communicate with friends, have discussions, leave game reviews, and play games with cloud saves.
The only bad thing is that Steam is semi-agaisnt VPNs. The reason being is that Steam doesn’t want you using VPNs to change your geo-location to get a better price. This way, Steam loses money while you get better deals.
The good news is that Steam doesn’t really ban users who use VPNs, and they do support anonymity. Chances are that if you are using a VPN with Steam you will be perfectly fine, especially if you are just using VPN for anonymity reasons. If you’re using a VPN to get crazy sales, you might put yourself a little bit more at risk for having account trouble since Steam has a policy that doesn’t allow you to “restrict your place of residence”. Their full list of policy includes:
“You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose”.
I’ve looked around to see what others think of this issue, and I found a good response from Steam user Ogami who explains why using a VPN with Steam is perfectly fine.
“Steam forbids the use of any VPN to conceal your point of origin while you are connected to Steam. They reserve their right to suspend your account for that. BUT, i never heard of someone getting banned on Steam for just using a VPN for internet privacy. That would not even fly in most countries since there are laws that allows you the use of such programs without question. The only cases where user got banned for using a VPN was if they used their new IP to shop in Steam stores with much lower prices. That is considered fraud by Steam. But that is no longer possible anyway since the Steam Shop region is now locked to your account, regardless of your IP. So my advise is, just keep on using it, Steam has no way anyway to determine if someone uses an VPN except in cases like the one mentioned above.”
To further my case that using Steam with VPN is completely fine, it seems even that “Gabe” who is “Steam’s Boss” is thinking about including more user-friendly terms with VPN after privacy violations that are happening around the world.
Why Use a VPN with Steam?
Example of Steam Sale
Playing video games with a VPN is getting more and more common as DDOS attacks and privacy violations are increasing. In the US, the FCC disbanded many regulations protecting user privacy, so now in 2017 and the coming years we are seeing more and more users concerned about their anonymity from their ISP.
ISPs track everything and they can see what type of websites you are visiting, how you are using them, and even what services and type of traffic you are using. This means that ISPs can track your browsing, game activity, torrenting, and streaming. However, greedy internet service providers aren’t the only concern, as more and more passwords are being stolen over the internet due to unsecured information, passwords, and a global lack of understanding of how vulnerable information is on the internet.
With Steam, you often have hundreds or thousands of games collected over the span of many years, so you don’t want some hacker performing an attack on your computer and installing keyloggers or other softwares.
VPNs are one of the best tools to encrypt your internet traffic and protect your IP (and thus your real world location) from hackers, snoopers, DDOSers, or someone trying to mess up your steam account. Lastly, it’s not unheard that ISPs shape bandwidth to prevent data congestion which could affect your steam download speeds or online game performance.
How to Use VPN with Steam
First you need a good VPN with fast speeds that won’t affect your online gameplay, or downloads. A lot of VPNs out there are too expensive or too slow. An expensive VPN, for example, could be ExpressVPN. It has good speeds and it’s easy to use, but it’s pricey. Some other VPNs like PIA are super cheap, but some users find that PIA is slowing down lately.
IPVanish is a decent VPN to use for gaming, but it’s not as user-friendly as some other options, and the website doesn’t have live chat.
My favorite VPN to recommend for Steam use would be TorGuard, since it’s super fast, affordable, and the easiest to use. Check out the TorGuard review.
With TorGuard, it’s easy to use a VPN with Steam. Simply sign up, download their app, connect to your preferred server location, connect, and then start Steam as per normal. Now you’re using Steam with a VPN!
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|---|---|---|
| Multi-platform Compatible | ||
| 256-AES Encryption | ||
| PRICE | $5 for 1 month with code "best10VPN" | $6.95 a month |
| Website Rating | 9.9 | 8.8 |
| 24/7 Live Chat | ||
| Residential / Dedicated IP for permanent streaming access | ||
| Has Mobile App + PC / Mac Support | ||
| Stealth VPN / Advanced Obfuscation techniques | ||
| Visit VPN Provider | Visit TorGuard | Visit PIA |
