Step 3 of 5

Reading classifications, terms and the real cost

This is the longest step and the one that saves the most money. You are going to open four documents about a game and find a specific thing in each, rather than reading any of them from beginning to end.

The four documents

Every online game worth signing up to publishes four things, usually linked from the bottom of its own website: a classification or age rating, terms of service, a privacy policy, and a page describing what it charges. You are going to read a small part of each.

Read them on the publisher's own site. Summaries on forums and video descriptions go out of date, and a term that changed last month is exactly the term you need. If you cannot find one of the four documents at all, treat that as information in itself.

Classification and consumer advice

Computer games sold or made available in Australia are classified under the national classification scheme, and the Australian Classification Board publishes the classifications and the consumer advice attached to them. Consumer advice is the short line that explains why a game received the rating it did — the particular content that drove the decision.

Two things to do, in this order.

1. Look up the title on the Classification Board's own database at classification.gov.au and note the classification and the consumer advice. The consumer advice is more useful than the letter, because it tells you what is actually in the game.
2. Compare that with the age rating the publisher or an app store displays. International storefronts sometimes show a rating from another country's system, which is not the Australian classification and does not carry the same meaning.

Do not take an age figure from anywhere that does not show you its source. This course does not publish rating thresholds of its own, because the categories and the rules around them are set by the Board and change from time to time, and a stale number in a workbook is worse than no number. The Board's site is the place to read the current ones.

Terms of service: five clauses to find

Terms of service documents are long because they are written for every situation in every country. You are looking for five clauses, and search within the page is the fastest way to each. On most browsers that is Ctrl-F, or Command-F on a Mac.

None of these clauses is unusual or sinister. Nearly every online service has all five. The point is not to be alarmed by them but to know which ones apply to you before you spend anything, particularly the one about what happens to purchases when an account ends.

The privacy policy, in four minutes

Four questions, and you can stop reading once you have the answers.

• What is collected? Expect an email address, a username, an age or date of birth, device information and records of play. Note anything beyond that which surprises you.
• Is it shared with advertisers or other companies? Policies usually have a section headed "sharing" or "disclosure". This is the section worth reading properly.
• Does it leave Australia? Most publishers are overseas, so the answer is usually yes. The policy should say roughly where.
• How do you delete it? Look for an account deletion process, and whether deleting the account also deletes the data.

If the policy is unclear, a plainly worded email to the publisher asking those four questions is a reasonable thing to send before signing up. The OAIC publishes the Australian Privacy Principles and explains what you may ask for, including access to personal information a business holds about you.

What it costs over a year

Headline prices are monthly; household budgets are annual. Do the small piece of arithmetic that nobody does.

1. Write down any one-off purchase price in AUD.
2. Write down any subscription price, and multiply by twelve. If a yearly option is offered, compare it against the monthly price times twelve rather than against the monthly price.
3. Write down the smallest bundle of in-game currency sold, in AUD, and the price of whatever the player most wants to buy with it. Note whether the bundles are sized so that you cannot buy exactly what you need — this is common, and it is how small purchases become slightly larger ones.
4. Multiply by the number of people in the house who will want their own account.
5. Add it up and compare the total with the monthly number you wrote in Step 2, multiplied by twelve.

Also check whether prices are shown in Australian dollars. If a publisher charges in US dollars or euros, your bank's conversion and any card fee sit on top of the displayed price, and the amount leaving your account each month will not be the number on the page.

Randomised items and simulated gambling

Some games sell a chance at an item rather than the item itself — a sealed box, a draw, a crate. This is the part of game monetisation that attracts the most regulatory attention in Australia, and it deserves a deliberate decision rather than a drift.

What to establish about any game you are considering:

• Whether randomised paid items exist in it at all.
• Whether the odds are disclosed, and where.
• Whether they can be bought with real money directly, or only with currency bought earlier.
• Whether there is a setting, a parental control or a store lock that prevents the purchase entirely.

The classification system takes gambling-like content into account, and the Classification Board is the authority on how a particular game has been treated. Rather than reproduce a rule that may change, this course asks you to check the Board's entry for your title and read the consumer advice.

One thing this course will say plainly: purchasable randomised items and gambling-style mechanics are not something to set up for a child and then not think about again. If the game has them, the store lock in Step 4 is the part of the setup to get right.

Your rights as an Australian consumer

Buying a game or a subscription from overseas does not put you outside Australian consumer protection when the sale is to a consumer in Australia. Under the Australian Consumer Law, goods and services come with consumer guarantees that cannot be excluded by a term in a contract, and businesses must not engage in misleading or deceptive conduct. The ACCC explains the guarantees, what to do when a business does not meet them, and how to escalate a complaint.

In practice the first stop for a problem is the publisher's own support process, and the second is your state or territory consumer affairs office or the ACCC. If an unauthorised charge appears, your bank or card issuer has a dispute process as well, and it is usually faster.

Keep records. A screenshot of the price page as it appeared when you bought, and the confirmation email, are worth more later than a recollection.

Telling the real site from a copy

Popular games attract imitation sites offering currency, accounts, codes or "free" items. The pattern is consistent enough to describe in general terms: an offer that sounds better than the publisher's own, on a site that is not the publisher's, which asks for your game login or your card.

Three habits that hold up regardless of the technique in use:

1. Reach the publisher's site by searching its name and checking the address, or by typing the address you noted in the first checklist. Not through a link in a message, a video description or a chat window.
2. Never type a game password into a site that is not the publisher's own. No legitimate service needs it.
3. Treat anything free and urgent as a reason to slow down rather than hurry.

Scamwatch publishes current scam types and takes reports, and the Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes guidance on recognising phishing messages. Both are free to read and neither requires an account.

This is also where the example title in this course reappears. If you want to read the publisher's own description, terms and pricing rather than anyone's summary of them, go to the source: visit the Star Stable Online website and apply the four-document method on this page to it.

The link above is a paid affiliate link: INAKA s.r.o. earns a commission if you sign up after following it, at no extra cost to you.

Step 3 checklist