Classification ratings and in-game spending

Two pieces of published information decide whether a game suits your household: how it has been classified in Australia, and what it sells once you are inside it. Both are findable in a few minutes.

Who classifies computer games in Australia

Australia has a national classification scheme for films and computer games. Classification decisions are made and published by the Classification Board, whose website is classification.gov.au. That site sets out the classification categories in use, explains what each one means, and holds a searchable record of decisions. It is the source for anything in this area, and it is the source we send you to rather than restating its rules here.

Two things are worth understanding about the system before you look anything up. The first is that a classification is not a recommendation. It is a description of content, assigned against published criteria. A game can be classified at a level that permits a young teenager to play it and still be a poor fit for a particular young teenager.

The second is that classification covers content, not commerce. The marking tells you about violence, language, themes and similar matters. It does not tell you how much the game will try to sell you, and it is not designed to. That is why the second half of this step exists.

Terms used in this step

Classification marking: The category a game has been given under the Australian scheme, shown as a letter or short code with a colour. The current set of categories is published at classification.gov.au.
Consumer advice: The short phrase published alongside the marking describing the content that led to it — the part that tells you what is actually in the game.
Randomised item: An in-game item obtained from a container whose contents are drawn from a pool by chance rather than chosen.
Premium currency: An in-game currency bought with real money, in which in-game prices are quoted.
Parental controls: Settings in an operating system, a game store or a game account that limit what can be played, bought or communicated.

Finding the marking and the consumer advice

Start on the game's own website, on the page that describes the game rather than the page that invites you to sign up. Australian classification information, where it is shown, usually appears in the footer or on a legal or support page.
If it is not there, search the national classification database at classification.gov.au by title. Search for the exact title, including any subtitle.
Write down both the marking and the consumer advice phrase. The phrase is the useful half.
If a title returns no result, record that. Some games distributed online are not individually classified, and the honest position is that you then have no Australian marking to rely on and must judge the content yourself.
Where you find a marking, read what that category means on classification.gov.au rather than assuming from the letter. We publish no age figures or thresholds of our own here, because the Board publishes them and its wording is the one that counts.

Why the consumer advice matters more than the letter

Imagine two games with the same marking. One carries consumer advice about online interactivity; the other about depictions of violence. Those are entirely different concerns for a household, and the shared letter hides the difference completely.

Read the advice phrase aloud and ask whether each element named in it is something you are comfortable with in your house. If it mentions online interactivity, then other players are part of the content, and what they say is not something the publisher wrote or can fully predict. Step 5 deals with that at length.

The eSafety Commissioner, Australia's online safety regulator, publishes free guidance for parents and carers about online games and about talking to young people about what they encounter. If the household includes children, that material is more useful than anything a letter on a box can convey.

Reading the in-game spending terms

Now the commercial half. The question is not whether a game sells things — almost all free games do — but whether you can say clearly what is sold, at what real price, and with what restriction.

Four questions settle it, and all four are answerable from a vendor's own store and terms pages.

What is being sold?

A named item you choose, a quantity of premium currency, a period of accelerated progress, or a chance at something from a pool. Each of these is a different kind of transaction and the first three are far easier to evaluate than the fourth.

What does it cost in Australian dollars?

If prices are quoted in a premium currency, work out the real cost of the smallest top-up in AUD, then the cost of the item you are actually interested in. A currency that is sold in amounts that never quite match item prices is a common design, and noticing it is not cynicism, it is arithmetic.

What exactly do you own afterwards?

In almost all online games, the answer is a licence to use something inside the game while the game runs, not property you can sell or take elsewhere. The vendor's terms of service state this. Read the clause once; it will be true of nearly every game you meet.

Can it be refunded?

Vendors publish refund terms. Separately, Australian consumers have rights under the Australian Consumer Law that a vendor's own policy cannot remove, including guarantees about goods and services bought in Australia. The ACCC explains those rights and how to pursue them. Note both: what the vendor says, and the fact that the law sits behind it.

Randomised items, treated carefully

A category to approach slowly

Where real money buys a chance at an unknown item rather than the item itself, the ordinary way of judging value does not work. You cannot compare price to what you receive, because what you receive is not fixed in advance. This course does not treat randomised purchases as suitable for children or young people, and we would not describe a game that sells them as an uncomplicated choice for a household with minors in it.

If a game you are considering sells randomised items, three things are worth doing. Find out whether the odds are published; some vendors publish the chance of each outcome and some do not, and a vendor that publishes is giving you something to work with. Find out whether the randomised route is the only way to obtain an item, or whether the same item can be earned by playing. And decide, in advance, whether anyone in the household may buy them at all.

This is also the place to be clear about what this course is not saying. We are not making a legal claim about how any particular game's randomised items are regulated in Australia, because that is a question with a real answer published by government bodies rather than one we should improvise. If it matters to you, the Classification Board and the ACCC are the places to start, and both are linked above.

Controls you already have

Before you look for a technical solution, there is a conversational one. A household rule agreed in advance — who may spend, how much, and with whose knowledge — prevents more trouble than any setting, because it is the thing people remember when a limited-time offer appears on a screen at nine o'clock at night.

Then, where you want them, the technical controls generally fall into three layers, and most households use one or two of them rather than all three:

Worth setting up

Payment layer. Not storing a card against the account at all. Nothing can be bought in one click if there is nothing to click with.
Operating system layer. Windows and macOS both include family settings that can restrict purchases and application use for a child's account. The settings are in the operating system, not in the game.
Account layer. Many game accounts have their own spending or communication settings. Look for them during Step 4, while you are already in the settings screens.

Worth knowing the limits of

Controls set on one device do not follow a person to another device or to a friend's house.
A control that is easy for an adult to switch off is often easy for a teenager to switch off.
No setting addresses what other players say. Reporting and muting, covered in Step 5, are the tools for that.

The worked example household

Hypothetical household — illustration only

The adults look up each shortlisted title on the national classification database and write down the marking and the advice phrase. One title returns no entry, which they record as "no Australian marking found" rather than as a pass.

On spending, they agree two household rules in five minutes: no card is stored against any game account, and anything bought is bought by an adult, with the AUD figure said out loud first. The teenager accepts the second rule more readily than the adults expected, because it was agreed before there was anything specific to argue about.

The product used as this course's example

The affiliate programme for World of Tanks describes it as an online multiplayer tank action game of team battles between players, on desktop computers. It does not tell us what it sells inside the game, what its Australian classification is, or what its refund terms are — so we do not tell you. Those three questions are exactly the ones this step has taught you to answer from the vendor's own pages and from classification.gov.au.

Visit the World of Tanks websitePaid affiliate link. Multi.kuk.shop s.r.o. is paid a commission if you create and activate an account after following it; your cost is unchanged either way.

Step 3 checklist

Work through this before Step 4

Find the game's Australian classification marking, on the vendor's site or at classification.gov.au.
Write down the consumer advice phrase, not just the marking.
Read what that category means on classification.gov.au rather than assuming from the letter.
If no Australian classification exists for the title, record that fact and judge the content yourself.
Open the vendor's store page and write down what is sold: named items, premium currency, progress boosts, randomised containers, or a combination.
Convert the smallest premium-currency top-up into AUD and write that figure down.
Find the clause in the vendor's terms describing what you own after a purchase.
Find the vendor's refund policy and note it alongside the fact that Australian Consumer Law guarantees sit behind it.
If randomised items are sold, note whether the odds are published and whether the same items can be earned without paying.
Agree a household rule on who may spend and up to what monthly amount in AUD, and write it where everyone can see it.
Decide whether any payment method will be stored against the account. Not storing one is a valid answer.

Before you move on

You now know what is in the game and what it will ask you for. You have still created nothing. Step 4 is the first step in which you actually sign up, and it is short, because by now the decisions have already been made.