Loudplay's servers are in the United States. Cloud gaming adds latency on top of whatever ping you'd already have to a game server, so where you live affects how the service feels. This article explains what to expect and what to do about it.
Latency you should expect
The latency that matters is the round-trip time from your device to our server. The game then runs on the server with its own latency to the game's multiplayer infrastructure (if applicable).
Rough numbers (network round-trip from typical users to our US-East data centre):
| Region | Typical ping to our server |
|---|---|
| US East Coast | 20–40 ms |
| US West Coast | 70–90 ms |
| US Central | 40–60 ms |
| Canada (Eastern) | 30–50 ms |
| Canada (Western) | 80–110 ms |
| Mexico | 80–130 ms |
| Latin America | 130–220 ms |
| Western Europe | 100–140 ms |
| Eastern Europe | 140–180 ms |
| Asia | 200+ ms |
Add the streaming protocol's processing time (~10–20 ms typical) for your felt input lag. So if your network ping is 40 ms, your perceived input lag is roughly 50–60 ms — comparable to a wireless mouse on a normal PC.
What "good ping" means for different games
| Use case | Comfortable up to |
|---|---|
| Single-player AAA | 100 ms — barely noticeable |
| Casual multiplayer (MMO, slower-paced) | 100 ms |
| Action RPGs, racing | 80 ms — playable, you adapt |
| Fighting games | 60 ms — the lower the better |
| Competitive shooters | 40 ms or less — and even then competitive players feel it |
If you're outside the US, competitive PvP shooters at sub-50ms input lag won't be possible on Loudplay. Single-player and casual co-op work fine almost anywhere.
Things you can do to lower latency
Use Ethernet, not Wi-Fi. This is the single biggest improvement for most users. Wi-Fi adds 5–30 ms of jitter on top of your wired latency. A $5 ethernet cable beats any router upgrade.
If you must use Wi-Fi, prefer 5 GHz. 2.4 GHz is shared with microwaves, baby monitors, and your neighbours; 5 GHz is cleaner and faster. In your router's settings, make sure the 5 GHz band is enabled and that your device is connected to it (not the 2.4 GHz network).
Close other apps using your connection. A Dropbox sync, a paused-but-not-actually-paused download, a smart TV streaming Netflix in another room — any of these can spike your latency unpredictably.
Restart your router. Routers degrade over weeks of uptime. A 30-second power cycle resets the buffers and often shaves 10–20 ms off pings.
Streaming-side settings to try
Inside the session, the floating Quick Menu has settings that affect latency directly:
- Lag Resilience. Default: Low. If you're getting dropped frames or visual freezes, increase this — it adds a tiny buffer that smooths over network hiccups at the cost of a few extra ms of input lag. For high-ping users (>120 ms), Medium or High often plays better than Low even though the input lag is technically higher.
- Bitrate. Lower bitrate = less bandwidth needed = fewer dropped frames on flaky connections. If your connection is stable, leave it on Auto. If it's marginal, drop to 5–10 Mbit/s manually.
- FPS. Lock to 30 if your connection can't sustain 60 reliably — better stable 30 fps than dropping frames at 60.
- Resolution. Lower resolution streams use less bandwidth and arrive faster. If your monitor is 1080p and your connection is borderline, try 720p in the streaming settings — your monitor will upscale.
For the full streaming-settings reference and what each option does, see "Stream is laggy or blurry — settings to try" in the Technical issues section.
Why all the servers are in the US
This is the current infrastructure. We don't have European or Asian data centres at the moment. We hear the request from non-US users; expanding requires significant infrastructure investment that has to balance against the actual demand we see from each region.
If you're outside the US and Loudplay's added latency is a deal-breaker for you, the honest recommendation is to wait until we have a closer data centre rather than fight a connection that won't be acceptable for your use case.
How to test before committing real money
The smallest Desktop package is 3 hours for $4. Buy it, run a session, play whatever game you actually care about, see how it feels. If the latency is workable, top up to a bigger package. If not, you've spent $4 to find out — better than a 20-hour package you can't use.
For input-lag-sensitive use cases specifically, the first 10 minutes of any session will tell you whether Loudplay works for you in your current location.