As per cenredash is it only for PC gamers as I’m on PS5.
Yeah, unless you're willing to do some config, or route a PS5 through a VPN (which is possible), it's not an easy solution, but the physics of light, and ping are not to be discounted.
The VPN solution is a "workaround" to sort out problems with servers that are hosted with AWS et al, in South Africa, but AWS and the like have issues due to the fact that they use their OWN bandwidth, and international routing, which we cannot control.
They have bad pings (which we cannot control), and we have better pings. So it's a workaround. We cannot entirely "disconnect" them.
But this (the VPN) is obviously not something we can generally support, hence the "experiment". But feedback is always welcome. It's just so hard to try and deal with game server matchmaking on different platforms, when all the game servers are being controlled by someone that Cool Ideas cannot have a relationship with.
Not for lack of trying, and we'd happilly offer free infrastructure to popular games, but we can't beat physics, and we can't force Fortnite to use our (freely) offered servers.
It's just that gaming companies don't generally care about South Africa as a market, and only want to deal with cloud providers such as AWS, Azure etc. And these cloud providers care about cost, and not about ping, and they have a very specific views about infrastructure and routing. We could disconnect AWS/Azure/Google but that would be stupid. We have better paths than they do to the UK, but it's nigh impossible to manipulate it, for one specific IP, or game.
Hence our VPN "experiment".
We invested a lot of money to get the lowest pings to Brazil (70ms) from South Africa on the SACS cable, but then eventually all our gaming clients complained that because of forced matchmaking that they couldn't find games that are enjoyable, at hours that they wanted to play. Because of timezone differences. A fault of the game, but not the ISP.
Clients also complained about the fact that there was a language barrier.
Yet, we invested a lot of money into getting the lowest pings to Brazil, on the newest cable. But people hated it.
So we cancelled it.
The issue is that as soon as we make console clients happy with our routing, then we get complaints from PC gamers. And the issue isn't with us as an ISP. The issue is the gaming companies, and their matchmaking (or lack thereof) and regional lockdowns.
If you want to make a difference, then complain and moan at your gaming server provider to let them take in interest in South Africa, and use local AWS/Azure/Google servers.
Or even better, ask them to allow you to host your OWN server...
But that's a pipe dream probably. I've fought this battle for ~8 years. And I'm a gamer. Gaming companies that want to "control" all their servers are silly, and are reducing their market share for the sake of convenience. Yet, they'll happily take your money.
Which is why I haven't supported a game that doesn't allow for self-hosting, or at least locally hosted cloud servers. It does mean I'm pissing in the wind, but hey....
