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Step 1 of 5

Step 1 — What signing up for an online PC game actually involves

The phrase “sign up” covers four different things that happen at four different moments. Taking them apart is the whole of this step, because almost every later decision depends on knowing which one you are looking at.

The four things inside “sign up”

When a website invites you to sign up for an online game, it is asking for four separate agreements at once. They are usually presented as a single sequence of buttons, which is why they feel like one decision. They are not.

The first is an account: a record held on the vendor's servers that identifies you, usually by an email address, and holds whatever you later accumulate. The second is a client: a program installed on your own computer that draws the game and talks to those servers. The third is a set of terms: the licence agreement, the privacy notice and any community rules, which you accept by continuing. The fourth is a money relationship, which exists even where nothing is charged at the start, because the game will almost always contain something that can be bought.

Pulling these apart matters because they fail and succeed independently. You can hold an account with no client installed. You can have a client installed that you cannot sign in to. You can accept terms you have never read, and you will have, because nearly everyone does. And you can run up a cost on a game that advertised no price.

The account, and what it is made of

An account is the smallest of the four and the one that lasts longest. It typically consists of an email address, a password you choose, a display name other players see, and a region or country setting. Some vendors ask for a date of birth, which is how age-related features are switched on or off. Some ask for nothing else at all.

The email address is the important part. It is where password resets go, where receipts go, and where notices about the account go. If it is an address you no longer check, you will eventually lose access to the account, and support staff cannot simply hand it back to someone who cannot read that mailbox. Deciding on the address before you start, rather than typing whichever one comes to mind, is the single most useful minute in this step.

The display name is separate from the email address and is the part strangers can see. It should not contain your surname, your school or workplace, your suburb, or your year of birth. The eSafety Commissioner publishes general guidance on online safety in games, including what to share and what not to; it is worth a read before you choose a name you will be stuck with.

Activation is a step people forget they did. Most vendors send an email containing a link that confirms the address belongs to you; until it is followed, the account may exist but not work. If the email does not arrive within a few minutes, it is nearly always in a junk or spam folder, not lost.

The client, and why it is large

The client is the program that runs on your computer. For an online game it is large, often several tens of gigabytes, because it carries the artwork, sound and models locally rather than streaming them. That size has three consequences that are easy to miss.

It consumes disk space permanently, not temporarily. It consumes internet data once on installation, and again every time the game is updated, which for an actively maintained online game may be monthly or more often. And it takes time: on a typical home connection the first install can run for hours, and a connection with a monthly data allowance can be substantially spent by it.

The client is also the part that is specific to an operating system. A client built for Windows will not run on a Mac, and a client built for Windows and Mac will not run on Linux. Step 2 is entirely about matching the client to the machine, so the only thing to take from here is that the client and the account are different objects with different requirements.

The terms you agree to, and where they live

Three documents usually sit behind a sign-up button. The end user licence agreement says what you may and may not do with the client; among other things it is where you learn that you are licensed to use the game rather than buying a copy of it outright. The privacy notice says what the vendor collects about you and who it shares that with. The community or conduct rules say what gets an account suspended.

Nobody reads all three in full, and pretending otherwise is not useful advice. A better habit is to read three specific parts. In the privacy notice, look for what is collected and whether it is shared with advertisers. In the licence, look for what happens to purchased items if the account is closed or the service ends. In the conduct rules, look for the suspension and appeal process. Those three paragraphs are the ones that affect you.

Australian privacy law applies to many organisations that handle personal information about people here, and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner publishes plain-language material on what rights that gives you. Separately, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission explains the consumer guarantees that apply to products and services supplied in Australia, which can apply to digital products as well as physical ones. Neither of those replaces reading the vendor's own documents, but both help you judge whether something you read looks unusual.

The money relationship, even when there is no price

Some online games are sold for a price. Others are offered with no upfront charge and make their money from optional purchases afterwards: cosmetic items, convenience items, time-limited passes, or a premium subscription. A third group does both. Which of these a game uses is a fact about that specific game and belongs on that game's own site, not in a general course.

What is general is this: a game with no upfront price is not the same as a game that costs nothing, and the second thing to work out, after whether it runs, is where money can enter. Step 3 deals with this properly, including what the law in Australia requires to be disclosed about randomised purchasable items. For now, simply note that the money relationship begins at sign-up even if nothing is charged then.

Which of the four can be undone

• The client — fully reversible. Uninstalling removes it and returns the disk space, though a few settings files may remain.
• The terms — reversible in effect. They stop applying to you once you stop using the service, although obligations about things already done do not vanish.
• The money relationship — reversible going forward. You can stop spending at any time. Past purchases are usually not refundable except where a consumer guarantee applies.
• The account — the slowest to undo. Closure is normally possible on request, but some records are kept for a period, and the email address stays associated with the account until it is deleted. This is why the account deserves the most thought before you create it.

A worked example

The hypothetical household from the course homepage reaches this point with one five-year-old Windows laptop shared between two adults and a teenager. Nobody has decided anything yet. Working through this step, they separate the four pieces: the account will use a mailbox one adult actually reads, not the teenager's school address, because password resets must reach someone; the client will go on the laptop, and its size will be checked in Step 2 before anything is installed; the terms will be skimmed for the three paragraphs named above; and the household agrees out loud, before installation, that no payment method will be stored on the account. None of this is a result anyone achieved — the household is invented — but the order is the point.

A product named in this course

If you want to see what a sign-up looks like end to end, one product is named in this course. The affiliate network that operates the link states that World of Warships runs an affiliate program paying commission on a single opt-in, a download, and the creation and activation of an account. It is offered for desktop computers running Windows or Mac; Linux is not included. Everything else about it — what it contains, what it requires, whether anything costs money — is stated by the vendor on its own site and is not restated here.

Visit the World of Warships website

Paid affiliate link. HH PROSERVIS s.r.o. is paid a commission if you create and activate an account after following it. The price you pay, if any, is unaffected, and the commission did not decide what this step says.

Words used in this step

Client

The program installed on your own computer that draws the game and communicates with the vendor's servers.

Account

The record held by the vendor that identifies you, normally by email address, and holds your progress and purchases.

Activation

Confirming that the email address on an account is yours, usually by following a link in a message the vendor sends.

End user licence agreement

The contract setting out what you may do with the installed program. Often shortened to EULA.

Patch

An update to the client, downloaded after installation. Covered properly in Step 5.

Before you move on

You should now be able to answer, for any game you are considering, four questions in order: which email address will own the account, how large the client is and where it will live, which three paragraphs of the terms you intend to read, and where money can enter. If any of those four is still blank, the rest of the course will feel abstract. Step 2 turns the second one into a procedure.