Peer-to-Peer Gaming: Which Games Still Use P2P and Why It Causes Lag

Every major fighting game released since 2023 connects players through peer-to-peer networking. So does Elden Ring: Nightreign, GTA Online, and Destiny 2’s Crucible mode. Despite the broader shift toward dedicated servers, P2P remains the default architecture when two to six players share a session and the developer wants to avoid server costs.

P2P’s appeal is straightforward: the host player’s machine runs all game logic, so the developer pays nothing for server infrastructure. The cost shifts to players instead. The host experiences zero network delay while everyone else absorbs 50 to 200ms of latency depending on distance and connection quality. Your inputs travel to their machine, get processed, and the results travel back before you can react. In a peek-and-shoot scenario, the host fires first not because they’re faster, but because the architecture gives them a head start measured in frames.

The P2P landscape looks different than it did three years ago. Rollback netcode transformed online fighting games from frustrating to competitive. Relay services from Steam and Epic gave indie developers a middle ground between raw P2P and expensive dedicated infrastructure. Call of Duty abandoned P2P entirely. But the core issues (host advantage, IP exposure, geographic distance penalties) persist in every game that keeps this architecture.

How P2P Works Compared to Dedicated Servers

In a P2P game, your console or PC connects directly to another player’s machine. That player becomes the host and processes all game state: hit detection, movement, physics, item interactions. Your inputs travel to their hardware, get calculated, and the results return.

Dedicated servers put that processing on a neutral machine in a data center with 1Gbps+ bandwidth and sub-10ms ping to major backbones. Every player connects to the same central point, so no one gets a latency advantage.

The difference shows up clearly in Elden Ring: Nightreign (released May 2025). FromSoftware built the game with a host-authoritative P2P model routed through Steam Datagram Relay. The session host’s client is the source of truth for all game state. Guest players connecting from another continent see rubberbanding enemies, delayed hit confirmation on bosses, and multi-second delays on item pickups. The relay hides IP addresses but does nothing about the latency between you and the host.

Which Games Still Run on P2P in 2026

Fighting Games (P2P With Rollback Netcode)

The fighting game community drove the most important evolution in P2P gaming. After Guilty Gear Strive proved in 2021 that GGPO-style rollback made international P2P matches viable, every major release followed:

• Tekken 8 (January 2024): Rollback netcode over P2P, replacing Tekken 7’s delay-based system. Cross-region performance is described as “steady” by the competitive community
• Street Fighter 6 (June 2023): Rollback netcode, widely considered the current gold standard for online fighting games
• Mortal Kombat 1 (September 2023): Rollback netcode replacing MK11’s older implementation
• Guilty Gear Strive (2021): The game that established the modern expectation for P2P rollback quality
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Still runs delay-based P2P without rollback. Nintendo’s servers handle matchmaking; once a match starts, quality depends on whoever has the worst connection

Rollback predicts opponent inputs and simulates the next frame without waiting for network data. When the real input arrives and doesn’t match the prediction, the game rewinds to the last correct state and replays forward. GGPO, the SDK created by Tony Cannon, is now free under an MIT license and underpins most modern fighting game netcode.

A peer-reviewed study published at OPODIS 2025 by Bromberg et al. formalized rollback behavior for the first time and confirmed that the technique cannot fully eliminate latency effects. However, the research found that P2P connections under 150ms feel nearly indistinguishable from local play when rollback is implemented correctly.

Co-op, Open-World, and Hybrid Games

• Elden Ring: Nightreign: P2P host-authoritative with Steam Datagram Relay. Open NAT enables direct connections; strict NAT forces relay routing, adding latency
• Deep Rock Galactic (including Rogue Core): Host-based P2P for all co-op sessions
• GTA Online: Still runs P2P networking built in 2013. Rockstar never migrated to dedicated servers, which is why the game has never supported cross-platform play. GTA 6 (launching November 2026) reportedly uses a “semi-cloud-based” model, though Rockstar has not confirmed dropping P2P
• Destiny 2: Hybrid architecture where Bungie servers handle matchmaking, scoring, and progression, while player positioning and combat run peer-to-peer. A server presence in every activity prevents host migration interruptions, but Crucible PvP performance still depends on player-to-player latency. Bungie has confirmed no plans to move to fully dedicated servers

Games That Moved to Dedicated Servers

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (2024): Full dedicated server infrastructure across North America, Europe, and Asia, ending the host migration era of earlier titles
• Counter-Strike 2: Valve’s sub-tick system runs entirely on dedicated servers
• Valorant: Riot Games maintains servers with sub-35ms ping targets
• Fortnite: Dedicated servers for every game mode since launch

If your ping stays high in P2P games after optimizing your router and NAT settings, the problem is often your ISP’s routing path to other players.

Relay Servers: The Middle Ground

The most significant infrastructure development since this article was first published is the rise of relay servers. A relay sits between players, forwarding packets without running any game logic. The game still processes everything on player machines (like P2P), but neither player sees the other’s IP address, and NAT traversal problems largely disappear.

Steam Datagram Relay (SDR) is the largest implementation. Valve routes game traffic through its own dedicated backbone across dozens of points of presence, adding 2 to 5ms of latency compared to direct P2P while eliminating IP exposure entirely. The system supports both P2P traffic and dedicated server connections. Epic Online Services and Unity Relay offer equivalent infrastructure, both free for developers using their respective platforms.

The cost explains adoption. Dedicated servers need compute power proportional to concurrent players. Relays only forward bytes. According to an AccelByte infrastructure comparison, relays work well for games with 2 to 4 players per session, while dedicated servers become necessary above 8 to 10 concurrent players. For players, relay routing is nearly invisible. The game plays like P2P except your IP stays private and NAT issues rarely block connections.

The tradeoff: relays fix security and connectivity, not fairness. One player’s machine still runs the authoritative game state and still gets zero-latency advantage.

Why P2P Still Causes Problems

Home Upload Bandwidth

Most residential internet plans deliver asymmetric speeds: 300Mbps download but only 10 to 20Mbps upload. When hosting an 8-player lobby, that upload bandwidth gets split across 7 simultaneous outbound connections. With 10Mbps upload, each connected player receives roughly 1.4Mbps of game data. Congestion begins around 4 to 6 connected players depending on the game’s data rate, causing packet loss that shows up as hit registration failures and rubberbanding.

Geographic Distance

P2P matchmaking frequently ignores geography. Connecting from Los Angeles to a host in Miami adds 80ms of base latency before any processing delay. Cross-continent connections (New York to Tokyo: 180 to 220ms) make competitive play impossible. The OPODIS 2025 research confirmed that rollback’s masking ability drops off sharply above 150ms, which is exactly where intercontinental P2P connections operate. Dedicated servers solve this by placing every player on the nearest regional server with predictable, consistent latency.

Host Migration

When the host disconnects, P2P games must elect a new host and transfer game state. This takes 10 to 45 seconds and frequently fails, ending the match entirely. Call of Duty’s “migrating host” screen was the defining frustration of the franchise’s P2P era before Activision moved to dedicated infrastructure with Black Ops 6.

IP Exposure and DDoS Targeting

Direct P2P connections expose player IP addresses to everyone in the match. Any participant can use network tools to discover your IP and launch targeted attacks. In 2024, gaming was the most targeted industry for Layer 7 DDoS attacks, with incidents rising 94% year over year according to Cloudflare’s annual threat report. The Aisuru botnet specifically targeted major gaming platforms including Steam, Epic Games, and PlayStation Network.

The OPODIS 2025 research found that lag-switch attacks and natural latency spikes are “indistinguishable and undetectable” in P2P architectures. Developers cannot reliably separate intentional connection manipulation from genuine network instability, making cheat detection based on network behavior analysis nearly impossible.

Reducing P2P Lag When You Can’t Avoid It

Open Your NAT

Strict or moderate NAT forces connections through relays (adding latency) or blocks them entirely. Forward your platform’s ports:

• PlayStation 5: TCP 80, 443, 3478-3480 | UDP 3478-3479
• Xbox Series X|S: TCP 3074 | UDP 53, 88, 3074
• Nintendo Switch: TCP 6667, 12400, 28910 | UDP 1024-65535
• Steam: TCP 27015-27030, 27036-27037 | UDP 4380, 27000-27031

Or enable UPnP in your router settings to let games handle port mapping automatically.

Prioritize Upload Bandwidth

Set up QoS on your router to give gaming traffic priority over streaming and downloads. For ASUS routers, enable Adaptive QoS and select Gaming Mode. Netgear uses Dynamic QoS with the gaming profile.

To host matches reliably: 5Mbps upload minimum for 4-player games, 12Mbps for 8-player lobbies. Test at fast.com.

Switch to Wired Ethernet

WiFi adds 2 to 8ms of base latency compared to Ethernet, plus intermittent packet loss from wireless interference. In P2P games, every millisecond compounds: your latency to the host, their processing time, and the return trip. Competitive P2P play on WiFi puts you at a measurable disadvantage before the match even starts.

If running Ethernet is not possible, use your router’s 5GHz band and select a low-congestion channel (36, 40, 44, or 48). A WiFi analyzer app can show which channels your neighbors are using.

After tuning your NAT, QoS, and connection type, any remaining P2P lag usually comes from inefficient ISP routing between you and other players.

P2P Persists for Practical Reasons

Peer-to-peer architecture will not disappear from gaming. Fighting games perform best on direct connections because rollback works with minimal network hops; adding a dedicated server would mean an extra round trip on every frame. Co-op games with 2 to 4 players generate too little per-session revenue to justify server costs. Legacy titles like GTA Online will keep their current architecture until sequels replace them.

When a game uses P2P, your network configuration determines the experience more than your GPU or CPU. Open NAT, wired Ethernet, and prioritized upload bandwidth are the three changes that make the largest difference. Everything else is working around an architectural constraint that only the developer can change.