Step 3

Step 3 of 5

Reading the classification, the terms and the spending information

This step takes about twenty minutes and involves no installation. You are reading three documents that every online game has, and that almost nobody opens: the Australian classification, the agreement you accept at registration, and the page describing what the game sells.

The Australian classification

Computer games sold or distributed in Australia are classified under a national scheme administered by the Australian Classification Board. A classification is a rating with consumer advice attached — short phrases describing why the rating was given, such as the level of violence or the presence of in-game purchases.

The Board publishes a searchable database of classified titles on its own site. That is the place to look, rather than an overseas rating that may differ, and rather than a forum post. If you want to know how a particular game is classified in Australia, search the Board's own register for the title; this course does not restate ratings or age thresholds, because the Board is the authority on them and its own listing is the one that counts.

Two points about classification that often surprise newcomers. First, a classification describes the game's content as submitted, and an online game that changes over time may be reclassified. Second, consumer advice is often where the useful detail sits — a line mentioning in-game purchases tells you something a rating letter on its own does not.

If a game you are looking at does not appear on the register at all, that is worth noticing and worth asking about rather than assuming either way. The Board's site explains the scheme and how to contact it.

The agreement: four clauses worth finding

At registration you will be asked to accept an end-user agreement, terms of service, or both. These documents are long and are not written to be enjoyed. You do not have to read every line to be better informed than most players; four clauses carry nearly all the practical consequence, and you can find them by searching the page for a few words.

1. Suspension and termination

Search for "terminate" or "suspend". This clause says on what grounds the publisher may close or suspend your account, whether you get notice, and whether anything you have paid for is refunded if it happens. Knowing it exists is the point: Step 1 made the case that you access an account rather than own it, and this is the clause that puts it in writing.

2. What you have when you buy something inside the game

Search for "licence", "virtual" or "purchase". In most online games, buying an item gives you a licence to use it inside that game, for as long as the game runs, rather than a thing you own and can sell. Whether that is acceptable is your decision; it should at least be a decision rather than a surprise.

3. Changes to the game and to the agreement

Search for "modify" or "amend". Online games change, and so do their terms. This clause tells you whether you are notified, and what happens if you do not agree to a change.

4. Governing law and disputes

Search for "governing law" or "jurisdiction". Many publishers are overseas and nominate their own country's law. For a reader in Australia the practical note is that a clause in a foreign publisher's agreement does not remove the protections Australian consumers have under Australian law, which the next section covers.

The game's own privacy policy

A game account is a record about a person, so the publisher has a privacy policy. Three questions make a useful skim.

What does it collect beyond the obvious? An email address and a display name are expected. Voice chat recordings, friend lists imported from elsewhere, device identifiers and in-game behaviour used for advertising are the sort of thing worth knowing about before rather than after.

Where is it stored and who else sees it? Many publishers process data outside Australia and share it with service providers. That is lawful and common; it is also something you may want to know.

How do you get it deleted? Look for the section on access, correction and deletion, and note the email address or form it names.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner explains the rights Australians have over their personal information and handles privacy complaints. Its guidance is written for the general public, not for lawyers, and is a reasonable half-hour of reading if this is new territory.

What the game sells

Games distributed without an up-front price earn their money inside the game. Before you install anything, find out which of the common patterns applies to the title you are considering. The usual ones are cosmetic items that change appearance only; convenience purchases that save time; season passes bought for a period of play; and randomised items, where you pay for a chance at something rather than for a known thing.

A game may use several of these at once, or none. The publisher's own store page or an in-game shop page is where to look, and where a publisher does not describe its monetisation anywhere, the honest summary is that the vendor does not state this.

Two habits are worth forming at this point, before any money is involved. Decide in advance what, if anything, you are willing to spend in a month. And find out before you register whether a payment method will be attached to the account, and whose.

Randomised items and young players

Randomised purchasable items — paying real money for a chance at an uncertain reward — deserve separate attention in a household with someone under 18, and this course will not treat them as a harmless feature.

Where a game sells them, Australian consumer advice attached to the classification will often say so, which is one more reason to check the Classification Board listing rather than relying on the store page alone. If you are deciding whether a game is appropriate for a young person in your household, the presence of randomised paid items is a fact to weigh deliberately, not something to discover from a bank statement.

Practical measures that do not require any product: keep the payment method off the account entirely and use prepaid credit if purchases are to be allowed at all; use the parental controls built into Windows, macOS and the store platforms; and agree a monthly figure out loud before anyone plays. The eSafety Commissioner publishes material for parents on gaming, including conversations worth having with a child about spending and about who they talk to in a game.

Your position under the Australian Consumer Law

Goods and services supplied to consumers in Australia come with consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law, and a term in a contract cannot simply remove them. Misleading or deceptive conduct in trade is prohibited, which is why a publisher's own description of what a game contains is a claim it can be held to. The ACCC publishes plain-English explanations of both, including what to do when a digital product is not as described.

This is stated here as general information rather than as advice about your situation. The practical upshot for a beginner is modest but real: keep the receipt emails for anything you buy inside a game, and keep a note of what the store page said at the time.

Finding all of this for a particular game

Everything above is a set of questions. Answering them means going to the game's own site, where the agreement, the privacy policy and the store information all live. For most titles the links are in the footer of the publisher's home page.

Enlisted is the title this course uses as its worked illustration, because it is the one we have a commercial relationship around and it is more honest to be specific than to pretend otherwise. The network promoting it describes it as a new game set in the atmosphere of the Second World War, published for desktop computers — Mac, Windows and Linux. The network does not state a price, a classification or a set of system requirements, so none appears here; the vendor's own site is where those details, if published, would be.

Visit the Enlisted website
Paid affiliate link. If you register an account and confirm your email address after following it, the affiliate network pays us a commission. The price to you is unchanged, and the commission did not decide anything written on this page. You can work through every checklist in this course without following it.

Whatever game you are looking at, the same four documents are the ones to find: the classification listing on the Board's register, the end-user agreement, the privacy policy and the page describing purchases. If any of the four is genuinely impossible to find, that absence is itself a piece of information.

A worked example

The hypothetical Adelaide household spends an evening on this step and gets three answers and one non-answer. The classification register gives them a rating and a line of consumer advice. The agreement gives them the termination clause and the sentence saying purchased items are licensed rather than owned, which the teenager finds more interesting than either adult expected. The privacy policy names an overseas processing location.

The non-answer is the monthly figure. Nobody can decide it in the abstract, so they settle it the blunt way: no payment method on the account at all for the first two months, and a conversation after that. The decision takes four minutes and removes most of what could go wrong.

Before you move on

You should now be able to find a game's classification on the Board's register, locate four specific clauses in an agreement without reading the whole thing, and say what a particular game sells. You should also have a figure in mind — possibly zero — for monthly spending.

Step 4 is the first step that touches a keyboard in anger: registering, confirming the email address, and the first ten minutes inside a game.