How to Play on Region-Locked Game Servers

Some games won’t let you play from certain countries. Others lock your account to the region where you created it. If you’ve ever tried to join a friend on a different server and been told your region isn’t supported, you already know how frustrating this gets.

Region locking affects everything from Steam purchases to online matchmaking in games like Valorant, Lost Ark, and PUBG. The reasons behind it range from licensing agreements to local laws to simple business decisions about pricing. But regardless of why a lock exists, the question is always the same. How do you get around it?

This guide covers the main methods, the risks involved, and what actually works in practice.

What is Region Locking

Region locking is when a game or platform restricts access based on your geographic location. It can apply to purchasing a game, activating a key, connecting to multiplayer servers, or all three at once.

There are a few ways publishers and platforms enforce it. The most common is IP-based blocking, where the game or storefront checks your IP address and compares it against a list of allowed countries. Steam, for example, determines your store region based on your IP and ties purchases to that region. Some games go further and require a national ID number for registration, which is common with Korean MMOs like Lost Ark’s original Korean version and FFXIV Korea.

Other games use account-level locks. Valorant ties your Riot account to the “shard” (region) where you created it. You can only matchmake with players on the same shard, and there’s no in-game toggle to switch. PUBG uses a similar system where matchmaking prioritizes your region, though it’s softer than a hard block.

Then there are platform-level locks. Console storefronts on PlayStation and Xbox let you access different regional stores, but games purchased in one region may not receive updates or DLC from another. Steam region locks can prevent you from activating game keys purchased from a different region’s store entirely. If you want to check whether a specific game is restricted in your country, SteamDB lets you look up any title and see exactly which regions have pricing set and which ones are blocked.

Why Games Are Region Locked

The short version is money and law.

Licensing is the biggest driver. A publisher might only have the rights to distribute a game in certain territories. The company that publishes Lost Ark in South Korea (Smilegate) is different from the one that runs it in the West (Amazon Games). Each publisher controls their own region and doesn’t want players leaking between them.

Pricing is another factor. Steam prices games differently by region, with significantly lower prices in countries like Argentina, Turkey, and Russia compared to the US or EU. Without region locks, everyone would buy from the cheapest store. Publishers lose money, regional pricing collapses, and eventually the cheaper regions lose access entirely.

Local laws also play a role. Germany has strict rules about depictions of violence and Nazi imagery in games. China requires government approval and enforces playtime limits for minors. Some games are banned outright in certain countries. The region lock is the enforcement mechanism for all of this.

How to Play on Region-Locked Servers

These are some of the main ways you can circumvent region locks. There are other niche methods, but the ones we’re listing here usually work for any game.

Method 1 – Use a VPN

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) routes your internet traffic through a server in another country, making it look like you’re connecting from that location. This is the most common way to get past IP-based region locks.

The process is simple. You install a VPN app, connect to a server in the region you want to access, and then launch the game or open the store. The platform sees the VPN server’s IP instead of yours and lets you through.

For games like Valorant, a VPN lets you create a new Riot account tied to a different shard. Connect to a US server, make a new account, and that account is permanently assigned to the NA shard. You can then play on NA servers. The VPN is only needed during account creation, though you’ll be dealing with higher ping if you’re physically far from those servers.

For Steam, a VPN can let you access a different region’s store, but Valve’s terms of service explicitly prohibit this. Their subscriber agreement states that using IP proxying to circumvent geographic restrictions or purchase at pricing not applicable to your region can result in account termination. People have been banned for this. If you’re using Steam with a VPN, understand that you’re taking a real risk with your entire game library.

The main drawback of VPNs for gaming is latency. Your traffic has to travel to the VPN server first, then to the game server. If you’re in Europe connecting through a US VPN to play on US servers, expect 100-200ms ping on top of your normal connection. For casual play with friends, that might be acceptable. For competitive ranked matches, it’s a serious disadvantage.

A quality VPN service matters here. Free VPNs are almost always slower, less reliable, and often sell your data. If you’re wondering are VPNs free, the honest answer is that free options exist but they come with significant tradeoffs in speed, server selection, and privacy. For gaming specifically, you want a paid service with servers close to your target region and low overhead on your connection.

Method 2 – Smart DNS

A Smart DNS service reroutes only the DNS queries that reveal your location, without encrypting all of your traffic like a VPN does. The advantage is speed. Because your actual game data isn’t being tunneled through a remote server, you get much less latency impact than with a VPN.

The downside is that Smart DNS only works against basic geo-checks that rely on DNS lookups. If a game checks your actual IP address (which most do), Smart DNS won’t help. It’s more useful for accessing region-locked streaming content than for bypassing game server restrictions. Some players have had success using it for store access on consoles, but for PC game servers with IP-level blocks, it’s unreliable.

Method 3 – Create a Regional Account

Some platforms let you create accounts tied to different regions without any tools at all. On PlayStation, you can make a new PSN account and set the country to whatever region you want during signup. This gives you access to that region’s PS Store. Xbox works similarly. Nintendo eShop lets you change your account’s region in settings.

For PC games, Riot lets you submit a region transfer request through their support page if you can demonstrate you’ve actually moved. The process takes 3-7 days, carries over most of your data (except ranked progress for the current season), and locks you out of changing again for 90 days. For most other games, creating a fresh account while connected to a VPN is the standard approach.

Method 4 – Cloud Gaming

Services like Xbox Cloud Gaming (Game Pass), NVIDIA GeForce NOW, and Boosteroid run games on remote servers and stream the video to your device. If the cloud gaming server is in an allowed region, you can play region-locked games without a VPN because the game thinks it’s running locally in that region.

The catch is that cloud gaming services themselves are region-locked in many countries. Xbox Cloud Gaming isn’t available everywhere, and you may still need a VPN to access the service itself. Input lag from the video streaming also makes this less viable for competitive multiplayer. It works best for single-player titles or casual online play.

What You Risk

This is the part most guides gloss over, so I’ll be direct.

Using a VPN to bypass region locks violates the terms of service of most major platforms. Steam’s subscriber agreement explicitly bans IP proxying to circumvent geographic restrictions. Riot Games doesn’t outright ban VPN use, but will flag accounts that appear to be exploiting regional differences. If a game detects VPN traffic, the consequences range from temporary blocks to permanent account bans.

The risk scales with what you’re doing. Creating a new free account on a different region? Relatively low stakes. Purchasing games at a lower regional price using a VPN? That’s the scenario most likely to get you banned, and on Steam it can mean losing access to your entire library. Playing on a friend’s regional server for a few casual matches? Most publishers don’t actively hunt for this, but the risk is technically there.

Legality varies by country too. VPN use is legal in most of the world, but some countries restrict it. Bypassing a region lock is rarely illegal on its own, but it typically violates a contractual agreement (the ToS you agreed to), which gives the platform the right to close your account.

Latency Can Be a Problem

Even if you successfully bypass a region lock, physics still applies. Data takes time to travel across the planet, and a VPN adds an extra hop on top of that.

Playing from Europe on a North American server typically means 80-150ms ping before adding VPN overhead. From Asia to Europe, you’re looking at 150-300ms. For turn-based games or slower-paced MMOs, this is manageable. For competitive shooters like Valorant or CS2, anything above 60-80ms puts you at a noticeable disadvantage. Your shots register late, enemy movements appear jerky, and the game generally feels unresponsive.

If you’re choosing a VPS for game hosting or setting up a private server, picking a data center location in the region you want to play from can help reduce this problem. A gaming-optimized server located in the right region will give you much better results than routing everything through a consumer VPN.

Some games also have ping locks. Hunt: Showdown, for example, introduced a region and ping lock to prevent high-latency players from joining servers where they’d have a peeker’s advantage. If your ping exceeds the threshold, you simply can’t connect, VPN or not.

Quick Comparison

The Other Option – Host Your Own Server

There’s one workaround that doesn’t involve VPNs, ToS violations, or latency penalties. For games that support dedicated servers, you can host your own and invite anyone from anywhere.

Rust and ARK are good examples. Both games run official servers grouped by region, and matchmaking funnels you toward your local cluster. But if you rent your own Rust server or set up a dedicated ARK host, there’s no region lock at all. Anyone with the server address can connect, regardless of where they are. You pick a data center location that’s roughly central to your player group, and everyone gets playable ping without anyone needing to fake their location.

CS2 works the same way. Valve’s official matchmaking assigns you to regional servers, but community servers accept connections from anywhere. If your group is spread across continents, a privately hosted server in a midpoint location (say, US East for a mix of European and North American players) is a far better experience than everyone running VPNs to join each other’s ranked matches.

Conclusion

I believe region locks will more likely be extended than go away any time soon. As long as games are licensed territory by territory and priced differently across markets, publishers will keep enforcing them. A VPN is the most reliable workaround for most situations, but it comes with latency tradeoffs and genuine risk to your account if you’re caught violating terms of service.

For the safest approach, use official channels. Riot’s region transfer system works if you’ve actually moved. Console storefronts let you create regional accounts without any third-party tools. And for games that support it, hosting a private server through a good hosting provider sidesteps the entire problem without putting anyone’s account at risk.

Whatever method you choose, go in with your eyes open about what you’re trading off. A few extra matches with overseas friends might be worth 150ms of ping. Losing a Steam library with 500 games probably isn’t.