xcd

I find that regardless of whether I'm hosting my own game or joining someone else's game, when I play RA2/Yuri's from Mainland China (that is, behind the "great firewall") I need to enable VPN to play. If I *dont* enable VPN, then I can still browse to the lobby / join the game but I consistently won't load when the host tries to launch the game. Having a VPN of course makes my ping look bad. Is a VPN absolutely required? Is there a way around this?