Classification ratings, in-game purchases and account terms

Three documents, twenty minutes

Before you create an account anywhere, three documents exist that were written for you to read, and that almost nobody reads. They are the classification rating with its consumer advice, the information about purchases inside the game, and the account agreement. Together they take about twenty minutes, and they answer most of the questions people only think to ask after something has gone wrong.

This step is not about becoming suspicious. The great majority of publishers describe what they sell accurately, because in Australia they are required to. It is about knowing where the answers live, so that you are deciding rather than assuming.

The classification rating and its consumer advice

Games sold or distributed in Australia carry a classification. The rating itself — the letter or word in the coloured box — is the headline. Underneath it sits a line of consumer advice, and that line is the part worth your attention, because it names the specific elements that produced the rating.

The body responsible is the Australian Classification Board. Its website explains what each classification means, what the consumer advice lines refer to, and lets you search decisions by title. We are not going to reproduce the categories here, because the authoritative wording is one click away and ours would only go out of date.

Two things to do with what you find. First, if anyone under eighteen uses the computer, read the rating before installing, not after, and read the advice line rather than only the letter. Second, if the consumer advice mentions in-game purchases or gambling-like elements, treat that as the signal it is meant to be — it is telling you the economy described in Step 1 is present and prominent.

What the purchase information should tell you

Somewhere on a storefront page, or in the game's own help material, there should be a description of what can be bought. Read it looking for four specific answers, and note which ones are missing.

• What the currencies are, and which of them can be bought with money.
• Whether any purchase gives a randomised outcome, and whether the odds are published.
• Whether anything is time-limited, and how long a typical offer runs.
• Whether purchases are per-account, per-device or shared across a household.

Prices shown to an Australian customer should be in Australian dollars and should include GST where it applies, so that the figure you see is the figure you pay. If the price displayed and the price charged differ, that is worth questioning rather than shrugging at.

Australian consumer law gives purchasers rights that a seller's own policy cannot take away, and digital products are covered by it. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission publishes plain-language material on consumer guarantees and on what counts as misleading conduct by a business. If you want to understand your position before you spend, that is the place to read it, and it is written for ordinary readers rather than lawyers.

One practical habit is worth more than any amount of reading: turn off stored payment details, or use a payment method with its own limit, so that a purchase requires a deliberate act rather than a single click. This matters most on a shared computer.

The account terms: six clauses worth finding

An account agreement is long, and reading it line by line is not realistic for most people. Searching it for six things is. Open the document, use your browser's find function, and look for these.

1. Suspension and termination. What conduct can cost you the account, and what happens to anything you have bought if it does.
2. Changes to the terms. How you will be told the agreement has changed, and whether continuing to play counts as accepting it.
3. Ownership of what you buy. Almost always a licence to use rather than ownership of an item. Knowing that in advance prevents an unpleasant surprise.
4. Refunds. The publisher's stated process, read alongside, not instead of, your rights under Australian consumer law.
5. Governing law and disputes. Which country's law the publisher nominates, and whether there is a complaints process before anything formal.
6. Account deletion. How to close the account, how long it takes, and what is kept afterwards. Step 5 uses this one.

You are not looking for anything sinister. Most of what you find will be ordinary and expected. The value is in having read it once, calmly, before you had any reason to care about it.

The privacy notice

A game account involves personal information: an email address at minimum, often more. The publisher's privacy notice should say what is collected, why, who it is shared with, and whether it leaves the country. Those four answers are the ones to look for.

In Australia, the handling of personal information by many organisations is governed by the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles, and the regulator is the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. Its site explains the principles in plain English and sets out what you can do if you think an organisation has mishandled your information. Our own handling of information is described on the Vast Notion privacy policy, which is short, because this site collects almost nothing.

A reasonable habit when registering anywhere is to use an email address you control and can check, to give the minimum the form requires, and to use a password you have not used elsewhere. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes free, general guidance on passwords and on turning on multi-factor authentication, which is the single most useful account protection available to an ordinary person.

Reading everything, or reading selectively

For most readers the second approach is better, for the simple reason that a method you will follow beats a method you will not. If you are about to spend a meaningful amount of money, the first approach earns its hour.

Making sure you are reading the real thing

All of the above assumes you are on the publisher's own site. Popular titles attract imitation sites that copy the look of an official page, and the documents on such a page are worth nothing.

The general checks are unglamorous and effective: look at the address bar and read the domain from right to left, prefer a link you reached from a search result or an official store listing over one from a message, and be wary of any page that asks for payment details before an account exists. Scamwatch, run by the ACCC, publishes current examples and takes reports; the Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes advice on recognising fake sites. Neither will tell you about a specific game, but both will train your eye.

For completeness, the example referenced in this course is reached through a paid link, and you can see exactly where it goes before you follow it by resting the pointer on it and reading the address your browser shows.

Visit the Raid: Shadow Legends website

Paid link. If you register and install after following it, artgrafika s.r.o. may receive a commission. We state nothing about this title beyond what the affiliate program itself describes.

The household in our worked example

Our invented household spends twenty minutes on this step. They look up the classification entry and read the consumer advice line rather than only the rating. They find the storefront's purchase information and note that randomised rewards are part of the economy, which matches what Step 1 told them to expect.

They search the account agreement for the six clauses. Four are where they expected; the refund clause sends them to the ACCC page to check what the publisher's policy can and cannot override; the account deletion clause they copy into the same note as their spending limit, so it is to hand in Step 5.

Their last act is the dullest and the most useful. They remove the saved card from the browser on the shared laptop. Neither of them has decided to spend anything, and this way a decision to spend has to be made on purpose.

Before you move on

• The consumer advice line under a classification rating is more informative than the rating itself.
• Purchase information should name the currencies, the randomised elements, the time limits and the scope of a purchase.
• Your rights under Australian consumer law sit alongside a publisher's refund policy, not underneath it.
• Six searchable clauses give you most of the value of an account agreement in a fraction of the time.
• None of it counts if the page you are reading is not the publisher's own.