KOF98UMFE: Incorrect pings?

[Flotilla]

I'm noticing some unusually high opponent pings in KOF98UMFE, many of them 300ms+ when they honestly shouldn't be. Most notably, the USA-Finland matches I played with a friend reported that he had over 350 ping while ingame... when I pinged his IP address directly out-of-game, it was only 156ms.

I have all of the relevant Steam ports forwarded, so there shouldn't be any obstruction between me and my opponents. Do you guys know any reason why this may be happening, and if it could be obstructing the quality of netplay?

EDIT: A friend of mine said that he saw my ping as 50-60 while I saw his as 150-200. I'm confused, but apparently pings can be incorrectly reported for one person and not the opposite in the same lobby?

[Uzu]

I can also confirm this is a thing, I played with a friend from Canada and pinging directly gave us around 86 ms when the game was displaying 150~

[CodeMystics]

If Steam cannot connect you directly, it may be relaying you through their server, which will give a higher number than pinging your opponent directly.