Setting up the account and the first session

This step is written in general terms that apply to any free-to-play desktop game, because the arrangement of buttons differs between vendors and changes with every update. What does not change is the order of the decisions, and the order is what this step gives you.

Getting to the right page

The single most common way people lose a game account is by creating it somewhere that was not the publisher. Before you type an email address anywhere, confirm you are on the vendor's own site: the address bar shows the publisher's domain, the connection is HTTPS, and you arrived there by typing the address or following a link you trust rather than from an unexpected message.

Treat any message that arrives unprompted offering a code, a reward or an account warning as suspect, even if it uses the game's name. Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, publishes current examples of this pattern and takes reports. Nothing on this page means you are being targeted; it means the habit is cheap and worth having.

The sign-up procedure

1. Open the vendor's own site and find the sign-up or account creation page. Check the address bar before anything else.
2. Enter the email address you chose in Step 1. Use the address you can actually reach, because activation depends on it.
3. Choose the display name. It is visible to strangers and often difficult to change later. No real name, school, suburb or birth year.
4. Set a password that is long and used nowhere else. The next section explains how to do that without memorising anything.
5. Enter the date of birth honestly. An inaccurate date disables the protections that apply to younger account holders, which is the opposite of helpful.
6. Read the two tick boxes separately. One is usually the agreement you looked at in Step 3; the other is usually marketing email. They are not the same, and you can decline the second.
7. Submit, then open the activation email and follow its link. If no email arrives within a few minutes, check the spam folder before trying again — creating a second account is the usual mistake here.
8. Sign in once on the website and confirm the account exists before downloading anything.

Passwords and two-factor sign-in

A game account is a target because accounts with progress and purchases on them have resale value. Two habits cover almost all of the practical risk.

A unique password. The problem with reused passwords is that a breach anywhere becomes a breach everywhere. The workable answer for most households is a password manager — the one built into your browser is better than reuse — or, if you prefer paper, a long passphrase of several unrelated words written in a notebook kept at home. Length beats complication.

Two-factor sign-in. Often shown as 2FA or two-step verification, this asks for a second proof beyond the password, usually a six-digit code from an app on your phone. If the vendor offers it, switch it on during setup rather than later, and store the recovery codes somewhere other than the computer you play on. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes general guidance on both passphrases and multi-factor authentication.

Installing the client

The client is the program that runs the game, and the launcher is the small program that keeps it updated. Both come from the vendor's own site and from nowhere else — not from a third-party mirror, a file-sharing site or a link in a video description. A pirated or repacked client is the usual route by which an unwanted program ends up on a household machine.

Four things to expect during installation:

• It takes a long time. The download is measured in tens of gigabytes. Start it when nobody needs the connection.
• It may ask for administrator permission. That is normal for software installation; the question to ask is only whether you trust the source, which you settled above.
• It may ask to add a firewall exception. Also normal for an online game. Allow it on private networks if asked to choose.
• It will patch again later. Online games update frequently, and the first patch may arrive the same week.

If the installation fails for space, go back to the figure you wrote down in Step 2 and clear room before retrying rather than installing to an external drive, which is usually slower.

Settings worth fixing before the first match

Defaults are chosen for the average machine and the average player, and you are neither. Five minutes in the settings menu is worth more than any advice about how to play.

1. Graphics preset. If Step 2 put your machine at the minimum, set the preset low immediately rather than discovering the problem mid-match. You can raise it later.
2. Resolution. Match the screen's native resolution if the frame rate allows it; drop it before dropping other settings if not.
3. Audio. Set the master volume before your first match, not during it.
4. Chat and social. Online games put you in contact with strangers. Find the chat, invitation and friend-request settings and restrict them to whatever your household is comfortable with. For a younger player, restricting them fully is a reasonable starting point.
5. Server region. If the game lets you choose, pick the one nearest Australia; this matters more than most graphics settings, as Step 2 explained.
6. Purchases. Leave no payment method stored. If the vendor offers a purchase confirmation or a spending control, switch it on now.

What the first hour is like

Expect a tutorial, a sequence of early matches against easier opponents, and a steady stream of rewards. That ramp is deliberate: it teaches the controls while the stakes are low. Two honest observations about it.

First, the early generosity is not the normal rate. Progress slows after the first several hours, and that is the point at which the time-compression offers from Step 1 start to look attractive. Knowing it in advance takes most of the force out of it.

Second, you will be bad at the game, and that is simply what being new is. Online games match newcomers with newcomers at first and then stop. Nothing has gone wrong.

Third, the first session is the right moment to check the settings you chose actually hold. Play one match, then go back into the menu and confirm that the graphics preset, the chat restrictions and the server region are still what you set them to. Some games reset parts of a configuration after the first patch, and a chat setting that quietly reverted is the kind of thing a household wants to catch in week one rather than month three.

If something goes wrong

The activation email not arriving, a client that will not start, a crash on launch: all of these are ordinary and all of them are the vendor's support department's job, not a reason to search for a third-party "fixer" tool. Find the vendor's support page now and note where it is — Step 5 asks you to do this properly. If a message tells you your device is at risk and offers a download, that message is not from the game.

Before you move on

You should now have an activated account with a unique password and, where it is offered, two-factor sign-in; the client installed from the vendor's own site; chat and social settings chosen deliberately; no payment method stored; and one session played. Step 5 is about what happens in the weeks after that, which is where the real decisions are.

Step 4 checklist