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Step 3 of 5

Step 3 — Classification ratings and in-game spending, read before you start

Two questions decide whether a game suits the household it is being installed in: what is in it, and where money enters it. Australia has a public answer to the first and a set of consumer rules around the second, and both can be checked in a quarter of an hour.

Who classifies games in Australia

Computer games sold or distributed in Australia are classified under a national scheme, and the classifications, along with the consumer advice that goes with them, are published by the Australian Classification Board. Its website holds a searchable database of decisions and an explanation of what each classification means.

This course does not reproduce the classification categories, the criteria behind them, or any legal threshold about who may buy what. Those are matters of law that change, and the correct source is the Classification Board's own site rather than a summary written elsewhere. The skill being taught here is looking it up, which is a skill you keep.

One general point is worth making, because it surprises people. A classification describes content; it does not describe how much time a game will take, how it is monetised, or who you will meet in it. A game can carry a classification suitable for a wide audience and still contain a chat channel full of strangers. The classification answers one question well and says nothing about the others.

Looking up a classification

1. Start at the Classification Board's site rather than a search engine, so that the result you read is the official record.
2. Search the title exactly as the vendor writes it, including any subtitle. Games are often reissued under slightly different names.
3. Check the media type. The database covers films and publications as well as games; make sure the entry you have found is the computer game.
4. Read the classification and the consumer advice together. The advice is the short line of text underneath, and it is where the detail is.
5. Note the date of the decision, because a long-running online game may have been classified years before the version you are about to install.

If the household includes someone under eighteen, do this lookup before the install rather than after. Reversing a decision once a game is installed and an account exists is a conversation; making it beforehand is a sentence.

Reading the consumer advice, not just the letter

The letter or word of a classification is a summary. The consumer advice that accompanies it is the specific part, naming the kinds of content that drove the decision. Two games with the same classification can carry quite different advice, and the advice is what tells you whether the content is a problem in your particular household.

Read it aloud if the game is for a young person, and read it with them. A disagreement about a game is easier when both people have read the same official line rather than each other's impressions.

When there is no Australian entry

Sometimes a search returns nothing. That can mean the title is distributed under a different name here, that it has been classified through a different process, or that what you are looking at is not the thing being classified — a demo, a regional edition, or a piece of additional content rather than the game itself.

The sensible response is not to guess. Check the vendor's own site for how the game is described in Australia, try the alternative title, and if there is still nothing, treat the absence as information: you have less to go on, so the household's own judgement has to do more work. Do not substitute a rating from another country's system, which uses different categories and different criteria.

Where money enters a game

Across online PC games there are a small number of recognisable places where spending can happen, and knowing the shapes makes any particular game easier to read.

• An upfront price. Paid once before you can play. Simple to see and simple to budget.
• A subscription or premium period. Charged repeatedly for extra features or faster progress, and the kind of charge most likely to be forgotten.
• An in-game currency. Real money is converted into tokens, and tokens into items. The conversion makes the real cost of a purchase harder to feel, which is precisely why it exists.
• Direct purchases. Named items bought for a stated amount, usually cosmetic or convenience.
• Randomised items. A purchase whose contents are decided by chance. Treated separately below.
• Passes and seasons. A payment that opens up rewards earned over a period, which creates pressure to keep playing while it lasts.

Which of these appear in a given game, and what any of them cost in Australian dollars, is a fact about that game and belongs on the vendor's own page. This site quotes no prices for anything. What is general is that you can read the list above against any game's store page in five minutes and know the shape of its economy before you start.

Randomised purchasable items

Some games sell items whose contents are determined by chance after payment. These have drawn sustained attention from regulators and researchers in several countries, including Australia, because the mechanics resemble gambling even where they are not legally treated as such.

Two things follow for a reader planning an install. First, a randomised purchase should never be presented to a young person as a reward or a treat, and nothing in this course should be read as suggesting that it is suitable for someone under eighteen. Second, if a game contains them, the money question is no longer about a fixed price; it is about an open-ended one, and the household limit discussed below matters considerably more.

Where a game's content involves simulated gambling, that is the kind of thing the consumer advice attached to the Australian classification may name, which is another reason to read the advice rather than the letter alone.

Setting a limit that holds

A limit decided before an account exists is worth far more than one decided afterwards. Three practical forms work better than good intentions.

The first is to store no payment method on the account. Buying then requires a deliberate act with a card in hand, which is enough friction to make most impulse purchases not happen. The second is a fixed amount per month, written down, with a rule about what happens when it is reached: it waits until next month. The third, where a young person is involved, is that purchases go through an adult rather than through the account, which also keeps the card details out of a child's reach.

Any of these is undermined by a stored card, which is why the first one does most of the work.

Your consumer rights here

Goods and services supplied to consumers in Australia come with consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law, and these can apply to digital products as well as physical ones. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission explains what those guarantees are and how to pursue a problem; its material is the right starting point if a purchase does not do what it was described as doing.

Separately, if an offer around a game looks dishonest — a page selling currency for a game it has nothing to do with, an account for sale, a message claiming your account will be closed unless you act — Scamwatch publishes current warnings and takes reports.

A worked example

The invented household from the homepage looks up the title on the Classification Board's database, finds the entry, and reads the consumer advice aloud together rather than stopping at the classification itself. On the vendor's store page they identify which of the six spending shapes above are present, and find both an in-game currency and a premium period.

They settle three things in advance: no card stored on the account; a written monthly limit that the adults control; and purchases made by an adult rather than by the teenager. No outcome is claimed for any of this, because the household is hypothetical. The point is that all three decisions are cheaper to make now than in three months.

Before you move on

You should now be able to find a game's Australian classification and its consumer advice, say which spending shapes a game uses, and state a household limit in one sentence. Step 4 creates the account, and the limit you have just written down is one of the things it protects.