Reading the classification, terms and purchase rules

Finding the Australian classification

Computer games sold or made available in Australia are classified under the national classification scheme, which is administered by the Australian Classification Board. The Board's site publishes a searchable database of classification decisions and explains what each classification means and what the consumer advice lines beside it are for.

Rather than repeat a rating here that could be out of date by the time you read this, the useful skill is looking it up yourself, and it takes about two minutes:

1. Open classification.gov.au and find the search for classification decisions.
2. Enter the game's exact title. Online games are often listed with a version or edition in the title, so try the plain name first.
3. Read both parts of the result: the classification itself and the consumer advice beneath it, which describes what drove the decision.
4. If the game is not listed, note that and look at what the publisher itself states about age suitability on its own site.

A classification is an age guide, not a judgement about any individual child, and the Board's consumer advice is usually more informative than the letter. If you are deciding on behalf of a young person, the eSafety Commissioner publishes family guidance on online games, including the parts a classification does not cover: chat with strangers, time, and spending.

What Australian Consumer Law gives you

Buying digital content in Australia is still buying something. The ACCC administers the Australian Consumer Law and publishes plain-English guidance on consumer guarantees, which apply to goods and services bought by consumers in Australia and cannot be removed by a term in a contract.

Two practical consequences for a game account:

• A term in an agreement saying "no refunds in any circumstances" does not override the consumer guarantees. What it does tell you is how willing the vendor is likely to be before you have to argue the point.
• Misleading or deceptive conduct in trade is prohibited. That applies to how a product is advertised to you — and it applies to this site too, which is why the funding arrangement here is disclosed rather than buried.

This is general information, not legal advice. The ACCC's own pages are the place to read the detail, and the consumer protection agency in your state or territory handles individual complaints.

Reading an account agreement in fifteen minutes

An account agreement — sometimes called terms of service or an end-user licence agreement — is typically long. You are not going to read all of it and you do not need to. Use the browser's find function and search for a handful of words. Six searches cover most of what a new player would want to know.

Write a one-line note for each. Fifteen minutes of this leaves you better informed than almost every other person opening the same account, and the notes are worth keeping with your other account records.

One thing to expect: a vendor's nominated governing law is often not Australian. That nomination does not take away rights you have as a consumer in Australia, but it does mean the practical first step in any dispute is the vendor's own support process, which is why Step 5 asks you to find it before you need it.

The privacy notice, briefly

Opening an account means handing over at least an email address, and usually a date of birth and an IP address. The vendor's privacy notice says what happens to those. Three questions are enough for a first pass: what is collected, who it is shared with, and how long it is kept.

If you want to understand the rules that apply to personal information handled in Australia, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner publishes the Australian Privacy Principles in plain English. Overseas publishers are not automatically covered by Australian privacy law, which is itself a reason to read their notice rather than assume.

Keep your notes from this section with your account records. If a purchase goes wrong months later, the useful thing is not remembering what the agreement said but being able to point at the line you wrote down on the day you agreed to it. A single page in a notebook, or a text file saved beside your other household records, is enough.

Randomised items, read carefully

Step 1 named randomised containers as the fourth kind of purchase: a box whose contents are decided by chance. They deserve their own section because they are where the most money is lost by people who did not intend to spend it, and because they are the mechanic most often discussed by regulators.

If a game you are considering includes them, these are the questions to ask before anything else:

• Can the container be bought with real money, directly or through an intermediate currency? An intermediate currency makes the real cost harder to see, which is part of why it exists.
• Are the odds published? Some vendors publish them for every item; some publish nothing.
• Can the contents be sold or traded outside the game? Where they can, the mechanic starts to resemble something quite different.
• Is the account holder under 18, and does the household agree that these purchases are off the table?

The classification consumer advice for a game sometimes refers to in-game purchases, which is another reason to read it rather than only the letter. Where this course does not state a rule, it is because a rule in this area should be read from its source, and the Classification Board is that source for Australia.

Where to find the vendor's own pages

Everything above asks you to read documents published by the vendor: the system requirements, the account agreement, the privacy notice, and whatever the vendor states about purchases and age. Those live on the vendor's own site, and that is the only place they are current.

Visit the World of Warships websitePaid affiliate link. If you create and activate an account after following it, the affiliate network that operates the link pays Decor charm production s.r.o. a commission. Nothing you pay changes, and the commission did not decide what this step says. See our funding page.

What this site states about that product comes only from what the vendor's programme states: it is a free-to-play online naval game for desktop Windows and Mac computers, and the publisher's affiliate arrangement pays on a sign-up — downloading, creating an account and activating it. Anything beyond that, including current requirements, pricing and the detail of purchases, the vendor does not state in what this site relies on, so read it there.

Before you move on

You should now have the game's Australian classification and consumer advice written down, six one-line notes from the account agreement, a short answer to the three privacy questions, and a household position on randomised purchases. That is more preparation than most people do, and it takes under an hour.

Step 4 is the practical one: the account itself, the download, and the settings worth fixing before the first match.

Step 3 checklist