I successfully launched the BYOND client earlier and played a game. A few hours later I try to join my friend and I get a "can't connect to BYOND hub" message instead of the usual "your game is starting" screen and eventually the connection closes. Then the BYOND webpage refuses to load on my browser until I fully nuke BYOND and all of its files off of my PC before redownloading it. The website responds fine (as you can see by me having access to the forum) but now the BYOND client is completely unresponsive, stuck on the "Loading game information..." screen.

I have allowed everything in BYOND\bin through the firewall.
I have switched the entire firewall off.
I have ran BYOND.exe as administrator.
I have moved BYOND's directory into C:\
I have uninstalled and reinstalled BYOND multiple times, including the ZIP version, to no avail.
I tried installing the 2022 version of BYOND and everything seemed to work until it told me it cannot validate my key as I am using an old version.
The BYOND directory is not stored in a folder using unicode characters. My system is in English.
This computer has onedrive installed but it is not activated on my profile, and I am certain BYOND is not connected to it.
I have tried manually connecting to a SS13 server through dreamseeker.exe and (as I am unable to validate my account (see below)) after it tries to log me in as guest, it gives me this message: https://pomf2.lain.la/f/74cwk53m.png
Here's a list of every running process on my computer incase there's any interference: https://pomf2.lain.la/f/vuynd308.png

Websites online say that www.byond.com/hub.byond.com is down but I can successfully ping these domains in CMD. Another friend of mine is also stuck on the login page's "Validating account..." screen. Is anybody else experiencing this problem? Is it a location-based thing? One of my friends can play games on BYOND, and one of them can't.

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[!!!!MONUMENTAL EDIT!!!!]
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Wow for some reason using a VPN completely fixed everything. The pager actually booted up, I could log in, I could start the freaking game. What gives? I don't think, and don't want to think, that the ISP blocked something to do with BYOND since this problem had only occurred for me tonight. Jeez. Now I just hope I don't have to keep this crappy VPN up and running permanently and that I can use the game fine after turning it off.

Oh yeah and also for some reason BYOND won't create a directory in documents anymore. Everything is just stored in the program file. Hope that doesn't cause any problems down the line.