Deep Rock Galactic FAQ — Ping, Servers, Network

Yes. Deep Rock Galactic has no anti-cheat system, so PingAim is fully compatible using any method. PingAim attaches to FSD-Win64-Shipping.exe and routes its traffic through your best available network interface — whether that's Ethernet, a 5G phone hotspot, or a second ISP line. In a P2P game like DRG, this means your connection to the session host (or the Steam SDR relay, if the host is behind CGNAT) travels through a lower-jitter path, reducing rubber-banding and mid-mission disconnections.

P2P. Ghost Ship Games does not operate any dedicated game servers — one player in each session acts as host and all others connect to that host via Steam's networking layer. This means your in-game ping is your latency to the session host's computer, not to a datacenter. Steam Datagram Relay (SDR) is used as an automatic fallback when the host is behind CGNAT or doesn't have port forwarding configured, routing your connection through Valve's relay infrastructure in those cases.

Ghost Ship Games uses a distance-from-host metric rather than displaying exact millisecond ping values in the session browser. This is a design choice — distance is a reliable proxy for latency in a P2P game because geographic proximity to the host correlates strongly with lower ping. The tradeoff is that you can't see exact ping before joining. Once in a mission, you can press Escape to see actual ping values for all players.

DRG is a PvE co-op game, so there's no direct competitive disadvantage from high ping like in PvP games. At under 80ms, the game feels smooth and responsive. At 80–150ms, you'll notice some rubber-banding on fast-moving enemies and slight delays on interactions. Above 150ms, enemy positions desync noticeably and some interactions (picking up items, activating terminals) require multiple attempts. The class you play also matters: Drillers and Gunners using AoE weapons are less affected by high ping than Scouts relying on precise ranged shots.

In a P2P game, the host's connection is the bottleneck for everyone. If the session host has a poor or congested connection, all players experience lag regardless of their own ping. Press Escape during a mission to check everyone's ping — if yours is low but others are high, or if the host themselves is at 200ms+, the host's connection is the issue. In that case, leaving and finding a session hosted by someone closer to you is the most effective fix. PingAim helps ensure your own connection to the host is as good as possible, but cannot fix host-side issues.

DRG has no anti-cheat and Ghost Ship Games officially supports modding through a tiered mod.io system. Mods are categorized as Verified, Approved, or Sandbox based on their impact on progression. Since there is no kernel-level anti-cheat or process monitoring, mods do not interfere with PingAim. PingAim operates at the Windows network stack level (WFP driver) and is invisible to the game process regardless.