Valve's P2P Networking Broken for Israeli Players for Over 2 Months

Since March 13, 2024, a systemic issue in Valve's GameNetworkingSockets (GNS) has plagued P2P multiplayer games for Israeli players. Ping times skyrocket from a normal 5-10ms to around 120ms, making real-time games like Street Fighter 6 unplayable. The problem is isolated to Steam's networking stack: cross-play with PS5 works flawlessly, and non-Steam P2P games (e.g., Tekken 8) show no issues.

The Technical Evidence

A community report on GitHub (issue #398) details the problem. The reporter states:

> "Since around the 13/03, there is a major systemic problem in every game that uses Steam Networking for P2P games... when playing with one Israeli or another with PC to PC the ping between players are ~120ms. when playing with European players the ping is around 60-80ms... It currently affects only Israeli players when playing PC to PC."

Cross-play tests confirm the bottleneck: PC-to-PS5 ping is 5-10ms, but PC-to-PC via Steam Networking is 120ms. This points to a routing or relay issue within Valve's infrastructure, not the user's ISP. Multiple ISPs in Israel are affected, and port forwarding does not help. Reports also mention similar problems in Egypt, suggesting a regional routing anomaly.

Impact on Developers

If you ship a P2P game using Steam Networking (via GameNetworkingSockets or the older ISteamNetworking), your users in affected regions may be experiencing degraded performance. The issue has persisted for over two months with no official acknowledgment or fix from Valve. The GitHub issue has 20 upvotes and 4 comments, indicating low visibility.

What Developers Can Do

  1. Monitor your player base: Check if you have users in Israel or the Middle East. If so, their experience may be broken.
  2. Implement fallback networking: Consider supporting raw UDP or other P2P libraries (e.g., ENet, RakNet) as an alternative to Steam Networking. This allows players to bypass Valve's relay if issues arise.
  3. Pressure Valve: Upvote the GitHub issue and contact Valve directly. The lack of response suggests they may not be aware of the severity.
  4. Use Steam's game-specific networking settings: Investigate if configuring SteamNetworkingConfigValue_t options like k_ESteamNetworkingConfig_P2P_Transport_UseICE or k_ESteamNetworkingConfig_P2P_Transport_UseRelay can force a different path.

The Code Side

If you're using Steam's ISteamNetworkingSockets for P2P, your code likely looks like:

SteamNetworkingIdentity identityLocal, identityRemote;
// ... set identities
HSteamNetConnection hConn;
SteamNetworkingConfigValue_t opt[1];
opt[0].SetInt32(k_ESteamNetworkingConfig_P2P_Transport_UseICE, 1);
EResult res = SteamNetworkingSockets()->ConnectP2P(identityRemote, 0, 1, opt, &hConn);

You can try disabling relay and forcing direct P2P with:

opt[0].SetInt32(k_ESteamNetworkingConfig_P2P_Transport_UseRelay, 0);

This may improve latency if the issue is relay-related. However, it could also break NAT traversal for some users.

The Bigger Picture

Valve's GameNetworkingSockets is a critical piece of infrastructure for many multiplayer games on Steam. A two-month outage with no communication erodes trust. For indie developers relying on Steam Networking to avoid writing their own netcode, this is a stark reminder of vendor lock-in risks.

The issue also highlights the difficulty of debugging network problems that are region-specific. Without tools to trace Steam's relay routing, developers are left guessing. Valve needs to provide better diagnostics, such as relay path logging or a test tool.

Next Steps

  • If you're affected, add your voice to the GitHub issue.
  • Consider implementing a network quality check that detects high ping and suggests switching to non-Steam networking.
  • For new projects, evaluate whether Steam Networking's convenience outweighs the potential for silent regional failures.

Meanwhile, Israeli players continue to suffer. Valve, your move.