Bug: Patch Bug: Custom Games Routing to Wrong Regional Servers with High Ping on Starlink ISP
Bug #7683
Patch Bug: Custom Games Routing to Wrong Regional Servers with High Ping on Starlink ISP
| Status: | Open |
| Priority: |
High |
| Added by: | Anonymous on October 7, '26 |
| Assigned to: |
Unassigned
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| Due date: | |
| Reported for: | |
| Actual Result: |
Creating a Custom Game lobby routes my connection to a distant, international fallback server, resulting in an unplayable 300+ ms ping, despite being the only player in the lobby. This happens because the game's post-patch backend misreads Starlink's CGNAT satellite routing as a connection anomaly and rejects the local NA West data center.
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| Expected Result: |
Creating a Custom Game lobby should correctly identify my physical location on NA West and place my lobby on the closest regional AWS GameLift server, resulting in a normal, stable baseline ping of around 19ms.
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| Severity: |
Major
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| Reproducibility: |
Always
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| Platform: |
Steam
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| Additional Notes & Comments: |
Not set
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Steps to Reproduce
- Boot Dead by Daylight on [Steam / Epic Games Store].
- From the main menu, navigate to Custom Game
- 1. Observe the lobby ping instantly spiking to 300+ ms. (Note: Changing DNS and flushing cache temporarily fixes the ping for exactly one match, but loading into a second consecutive match immediately causes the server logic to revert to 300+ ms fallback servers).
Explanation
[Patch Bug] Custom Games routing exclusively to wrong regional servers (300+ Ping) on Starlink ISP.
Since the deployment of the latest patch, creating a Custom Game lobby immediately routes me to an international/global fallback server resulting in 300+ MS ping. This is happening exclusively to me on my network while other players in my region (NA West) are connecting fine. I am playing on a Starlink ISP connection. Because Starlink utilizes Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT) and dynamic satellite/ground-station routing, the new backend server validation protocol introduced in the latest patch appears to be flags the Starlink CGNAT IP shifts as a connection anomaly. This causes the AWS GameLift matchmaking backend to reject the local NA West node and force-route my client onto a global fallback server after the initial boot-up handshake.
Troubleshooting Already Attempted (To Isolate Bug):
• Tested baseline network connectivity: CMD Ping to Google averages a stable 19ms with 0% packet loss. The physical connection is healthy.
• Fully disabled IPv6 to force IPv4 routing.
• Completely reset the Windows network adapter stack and flushed the DNS resolver cache.
• Tested utilizing public DNS networks (Google DNS and Cloudflare DNS).
• Attempted using network route optimization software (ExitLag manually locked to a local node using UDP protocols), which the game client successfully bypassed to force the fallback server anyway.
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