Gaming with Bad Internet

So you want to play online games with your friends, but you’ve found yourself in a position where a decent internet connection is out of reach. You’re stuck with the weak and unreliable satellite variant that may as well be dial-up, because surely dial-up internet would be better than whatever this is, right?

If you’re too young to know what dial-up is, don’t worry, it won’t make your situation much better.

There’s always the route of single-player games. They’re great on their own, and tons of fun can be had playing them. Sometimes though, it’s great to be able to play a game with some friends whether they live near or far.

Have no fear, for we are in the same leaky boat. My internet actually used to be much worse than it is now, and I’m not entirely sure how I got through that, but I did manage to play some online games despite it all. It’s possible! You just have to find the right ones or you will be in a constant loop of disconnecting and reconnecting more than actually playing anything.

To those of you who have never had to suffer, you can’t imagine the level of irritability and anxiety this can cause. Got lag? Your ping bumped its way up to 100? Sure, that sucks, but try playing a game when your ping has bumped up to 20,000. It should have disconnected me, but the torture went on. Granted, of course, that’s when the game was in that nasty state of instability. Once it stabilized for me, it averaged out at about 650 - 750. And that, my friend, was on a good day.

We’ll talk about what games I was even able to play online to any extent in just a moment after a few tips.

First and foremost, if you aren’t using a wired-in connection, it will be in your best interest to fix that if at all possible. It makes a HUGE difference, even with a satellite connection. If a wired connection isn’t something feasible for any reason, at the very least you’ll want to position yourself closer to the router. You’re also not going to want any other applications running on your device if you can help it, as this will help minimize your bandwidth usage, leaving more for whatever game you’re trying to play. One final note: try to select a server geographically close to you.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about the fun part: the games!

That horrible connection I mentioned earlier that somehow didn’t get me disconnected? That was 7 Days to Die. Crazy, right?

7 Days to Die was one of the games I could most reliably play with an internet connection more unstable than the Canadian economy. Depending on the day, the maximum number of people in the server was 4 before I would end up in a constant loop of falling through maps, disconnecting, and hating everything the apocalypse stood for. Most of the time it was only myself and one other person, and generally, the game was completely fine to play even though it would generally settle into a ping around 650 within a few minutes of connecting. Save for a bit of a delay, it was mostly playable and it didn’t impact my ability to kill zombies or collect resources. But those skyscraper quests, where like 97 zombies all spawn in at the same time? Let me tell you, this was a great experiment to see how high your ping could really go before you get disconnected. Or, oddly enough, hopping onto a vehicle and going for a ride only to free-fall under the map for 10 minutes. My record was over 100,000.

The crazy part is that I’m not even exaggerating.

As long as you’re okay with a bit of a delay and avoid driving anywhere, 7 Days to Die was mostly playable with a very bad internet connection.

Terraria is another survival-by-crafting game that you can play for hours upon hours with tons of replay value. Not only is the game super fun to play anyway, but it’s very light on its network requirements, especially since the whole map downloads its current state while you connect. If you and your friend are on opposite ends of the map, the game only updates what is directly around you specifically.

This was another game where it was very rare for me to disconnect. There didn’t really seem to be any activities that made the connection worse at any time, and the connection stayed consistent unless weather played a part, as satellite internet is prone to those variables.

Due to its replayability and light network requirements, this one is a must-try if you’re in the bad-internet boat.

Next up, we have Among Us. Groan all you want – desperate times call for desperate measures.

This will definitely depend on your server and who you’re playing with. I tried this one with a bunch of people who live in my general geographical area and it went super well! I almost forgot my internet was the equivalent of a satellite dish mounted to a potato. Aside from the occasional teleportation due to lag, this game was playable with very few hiccups.

However…

I decided to try playing a completely random online match a few times to see how it would go, and the performance depended on the individual match. I would assume this had to do with the location of whoever else was in the match with me. Let’s just say that more than once, I was voted as the imposter, literally because I was “Teleporting all over the map.” The lag was so bad, that one person thought I was cheating, and the others just thought it suspicious. Still, entertainment is entertainment.

If the other players were at least somewhat nearby though, it was doable!

Next, a game some may have been expecting but others will also groan at: Old School Runescape. There, I said it.

The Old School version was released in the early 2000s when bad internet was still widespread, a problem for many people. During its time, it was also a cheaper (or free) variant to other MMOs on the market. Even if all you do is fish or mine, it can still be something to do with friends if you’re looking for something lowkey. Killing monsters or bosses with your friends can still absolutely be an option, though!

Depending on just how bad your internet is, you may experience some lag depending on how populated your world is, or where you are. For example, going to the Grand Exchange in a trade world is probably not the best idea if you're already lagging when there aren’t many people around; you’ll likely get disconnected. Minigames that are packed with people may also prove to be a pain.

Old School Runescape hails from a time when not everyone had the luxury of high-speed internet. It is still being played today, not only for the nostalgia but for the fun it can still bring people, so it was an easy addition to this list.

Last but absolutely not least we have our honorable mentions, couch co-op games - no internet required!

If you can play with people in person, whether they are friends, siblings, cousins, or other family, couch co-op is tried and true. It has become far less common than it used to be, and more and more people appear to be missing the appeal of it.

Less common doesn't mean you have no options though. Games like It Takes Two, Baldur’s Gate 3, Halo 1 through 4, Castle Crashers, Cuphead, and Stardew Valley fit the bill; I’ll even mention Terraria here again because it applies. There are so many more out there that you can play locally, but the lists will vary depending on what you’re using to play the games. Consoles tend to keep couch co-op in mind more often.

Having bad internet doesn’t have to keep you from gaming with your friends. There are options out there! Talk about it with whoever you want to play games with and find something you can all enjoy together.