Bug #1294

High Ping Issue with Israeli Players Since March 2026

Status:	Open
Priority:	High
Added by:	blacky4679 on April 10, '26
Assigned to:	Unassigned
Due date:
Reported for:	S06.04 Auto

Steps to Reproduce

1. Pretty sure you can't reproduce it as long as you don't have Israeli buddies within your dev team.
2. If you want, one of you could add me on Steam and I'll show the issue happening in real time when my friends are online.

Explanation

Weirdly high ping when playing with local buddies in Israel.

So, since about the start of March 2026 i've been having a much higher ping when lobbying with players from my own country - Israel, and vice versa. We've always been playing together for months before that and the usual ping was about 30 in between us, which is ok for a local network, but since around ~40 days ago, things have changed. The ping between us is about 120-150 at all times, no matter which one of us is the host.
It seems to be a country wide problem that i just cant figure out the cause. All the random Israeli players that i meet complain about the same thing, but when playing with European players the ping is the usual 80-120 which is typical latency from Israel to most European countries.

I've legit thought this was due to the current war happening in Israel but I've tested this with another game (Alien Swarm) and there was no issue - ping was 8ms between me and my friend, so this seems to be a DRG-centric matter.

This has been a new norm for 40 days now and its driving me and my friends insane because i cant figure out what's wrong. Its not from our connection or ISP because we have different ISP's and living in different locations within the country, and as said, its not happening in different games.

The attached pic shows me hosting with an Israeli friend (elninio) and a German and Finnish players. The Israeli player has the highest ping to me.

What else can be checked on our end and yours? Has something changed in the game's netcode with Season 6's release (or one of the hotfixes, because the seasons has started roughly a month before the issue appeared) that we're not aware of?

Thanks in advance and hopefully i can put this issue to bed already.

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