What a free-to-play account actually involves

What "free-to-play" names

Free-to-play is a way of selling a game rather than a kind of game. The software costs nothing to download and nothing to start. You are not asked for a card number at any point before you are playing. The revenue arrives later, from a minority of players who choose to spend inside the game, and from nobody else.

That is a genuinely different arrangement from the one most people over thirty grew up with, where you paid once in a shop and owned a box. It is worth sitting with the difference for a moment, because almost everything else in this course follows from it.

When you pay once for a boxed product, the seller's job is finished at the sale. In a free-to-play game, the seller's job begins at the sale, because you are not a customer yet. Everything the game does in your first hours is designed to make the game enjoyable enough that you come back, and the design of the purchase offers is built around players who have already come back many times. None of that is sinister by itself. It does mean that "free" describes the entry, not the whole relationship, and knowing that at the start puts you in a better position than finding it out in month three.

The product named in this course is one of these. World of Warships is an online naval game published for desktop Windows and Mac computers. The vendor runs an affiliate programme, and the thing the vendor pays for is a person downloading the game and creating and activating an account — that is, a sign-up, not a purchase. That tells you something plain: the account itself has value to the publisher before any money changes hands. Beyond that, this course does not state what the vendor charges or offers, because the vendor does not state it in anything this site relies on. Read the vendor's own current page for that.

How a game that costs nothing earns money

There are only a few mechanisms in common use across the free-to-play category, and once you can name them you can recognise them in any game you try.

The first is cosmetics: things that change how your ship, character or profile looks without changing how it performs. A paint scheme, a flag, a nameplate. These are the least complicated purchases because they cannot affect anyone's result, including yours.

The second is time compression. Most free-to-play games hand out progress slowly and sell the ability to go faster — more in-game currency per match, a quicker path to the next item of progress. The game remains completable without paying; paying shortens the calendar.

The third is premium content: a specific vehicle, character or piece of equipment sold directly. Whether this affects competitive balance varies enormously between games, and it is the thing long-standing players argue about most.

The fourth is randomised containers — a box, crate or chest bought or earned, whose contents are determined by chance. These are the mechanic that attracts the most regulatory attention worldwide, and Step 3 deals with them specifically, including how Australian classification treats them.

A fifth, which is not a purchase at all, is the one you are reading about right now: referral and affiliate arrangements, where a third party is paid for sending a new sign-up. Bare Axis is part of that fifth mechanism, which is why the disclosure is where it is.

The four kinds of in-game purchase, side by side

You do not need to memorise this. The point is that when a game offers you something, you can ask which of the four it is before you ask whether you want it. That one question slows a purchase decision down by about five seconds, which is usually enough.

What an account is, and what you hand over

An account is a record on the publisher's servers that belongs to you: your progress, your settings, your purchases if any, and the credentials that prove it is you. Opening one in a free-to-play game generally means giving an email address, choosing a display name and a password, confirming your age or date of birth, and clicking through an agreement.

Activation is the extra step most publishers add: you receive an email, you follow the link in it, and the account becomes usable. This is why the email address you choose matters — an address you cannot reach is an account you cannot finish opening.

Three things are worth deciding before you type anything in:

• Which email address. Many people keep one address for banking and work and another for shops, games and newsletters. That separation costs nothing and makes a later clean-up much easier.
• What display name. Online display names are visible to strangers. Avoid your full name, your school, your suburb or your birth year. The eSafety Commissioner publishes general guidance on protecting personal information online at esafety.gov.au.
• Who holds the password. If the account is for a young person, decide now whether an adult holds the credentials, and keep any payment method off the account entirely until you have read Step 5.

The agreement you click through is a real contract. Step 3 is about reading the parts of it that matter rather than all of it, because nobody reads all of it and pretending otherwise helps no one.

One restriction applies to the particular game named here and may not apply to others: it is published for desktop computers running Windows or macOS. There is no Linux version offered, and it is not a phone or console title. If the only computer in your house runs Linux, this is the moment to know it, rather than after a long download.

Honest trade-offs

Neither column is a verdict. They are the considerations that come up most often, listed so you can weigh the ones that apply to your household.

A short glossary

Client

The program installed on your computer that connects to the game's servers. Downloading the client is what "download the game" means.

Launcher

A small program that checks for updates and then starts the client. Most online games use one.

Patch

An update to the client. Online games patch often, and some patches are large.

In-game currency

Points earned by playing or bought with money, spent inside the game only. Most games have at least two kinds.

Free-to-play

A model where the game costs nothing to install and earns money from optional purchases afterwards.

Two-factor sign-in

A second proof of identity beyond the password, usually a code from an app on your phone. Covered in Step 4.

Before you move on

You should now be able to say what free-to-play means in a sentence, name the four kinds of purchase, and explain what an account is and what activating one involves. You should also know which email address you intend to use, and whether the computer in your house runs Windows or macOS — the second of those is Step 2's whole subject.

Nothing so far has asked you to install anything, and nothing in this step is urgent. If the four kinds of purchase felt like the useful part, Step 3 goes further into the randomised one. If the computer question is the one on your mind, go to Step 2 next.

Step 1 checklist