Spending, time, support and leaving

Writing down a money limit in AUD

A free-to-play game will ask you for money, politely, repeatedly, and at the moments you are most likely to say yes. The defence that works is not resisting each offer; it is having decided the answer before the question arrives.

Write a figure down. It can be zero — zero is a complete answer and the game remains playable. It can be a monthly amount in Australian dollars that you would not notice leaving the account. What matters is that the figure exists in writing before the first offer, and that it is denominated in AUD rather than in whatever the game's internal currency is called.

Three questions help set it:

• If you spent this every month for a year, what would the total be, and is that a number you are comfortable saying out loud?
• Would you still consider it reasonable if you stopped playing in six weeks, which is what happens with most games someone tries?
• Is it coming out of money already allocated to entertainment, or is it new spending?

Why in-game currency makes prices hard to read

Most free-to-play games put a layer between your dollars and your purchases. You buy a quantity of an internal currency, then spend that currency on items. The bundles are usually sized so that you cannot buy exactly what you want: a little is always left over, and the leftover is a reason to buy again.

The habit that defeats this is arithmetic. Before any purchase, convert the price back into Australian dollars: divide the price of the currency bundle by the number of units it contains, multiply by the units the item costs, and look at the dollar figure rather than the unit figure. It takes thirty seconds and it is frequently surprising.

Watch for two patterns that make the arithmetic harder. A bundle that appears only during a limited window pushes you to decide quickly. A discount shown against a price that was never the real price makes the saving look larger than it is — and advertising a saving against a fictitious former price would be a problem under the Australian Consumer Law, which the ACCC administers.

Controls that work in a household

Willpower is not a control. These are:

• No stored payment method. The single most effective step. Every purchase then requires someone to fetch a card, which is exactly the friction you want.
• A prepaid method with a fixed balance, if purchases are going to happen. The limit enforces itself.
• Operating-system family controls. Windows and macOS both include family settings that can require approval for purchases on a child's account.
• Bank notifications. A notification for every transaction means an unexpected purchase is noticed the same day.
• A conversation, not a rule. For teenagers in particular, agreeing why the limit exists lasts longer than imposing it.

If an unauthorised purchase does happen on a child's account, the vendor's support process is the first stop, then your bank, and the ACCC's consumer guidance explains what the consumer guarantees cover.

Time, and the way online games ask for it

Online games are built to reward returning. Daily objectives, limited-time events and progress that decays if you stop are all mechanisms for that. None of this is a conspiracy — it is how a game with a continuing service keeps a population — but it is designed, and it is easier to live with once you can see the design.

Two household habits are usually enough. Decide roughly when the game is played, and let daily objectives go unclaimed sometimes, deliberately, so that missing one stops feeling like a loss. The eSafety Commissioner publishes practical family guidance on balancing screen time, written for Australian households.

If gaming ever stops feeling like something a person chooses, that is a matter for a general practitioner rather than for a website, and this course will not pretend otherwise.

A sensible first three months

Finding support before you need it

Find the vendor's support page now, while nothing is wrong, and keep the address with your account notes. When something does go wrong — a purchase that did not arrive, an account you cannot sign in to, a suspension you do not understand — you will want it immediately and you will be in a poor state to search for it.

Note three things: where tickets are submitted, what identifying details are required, and the stated response time if there is one. Keep your own records too: the account email, the date you opened it, and a receipt for anything you ever buy.

Expect support to be slower than a shop, and expect the first reply to be a standard one. Escalating politely and in writing works better than anything else.

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Leaving: pausing, deleting, and your data

Leaving an online game is usually not a decision at all — people stop playing and the account sits there. That is fine, but there are three distinct things you might want, and they are not the same.

Stopping. Uninstalling the client frees the disk space and leaves the account intact. Nothing is lost, and nothing is charged. If the game had a recurring subscription, cancel it separately: uninstalling does not cancel anything.

Securing a dormant account. An account you have stopped using is the one most likely to be taken over, because nobody notices. Before you walk away, confirm two-factor sign-in is on, remove any stored payment method, and make sure the recovery email address is one you still read.

Deleting. If you want the account gone, the vendor's privacy notice and support pages will say whether deletion is offered and what it covers. Expect to lose everything bought or earned, and expect some records to be retained for the vendor's own legal reasons. If you are in Australia and the vendor handles your personal information here, the OAIC explains the access and correction rights that apply and how to complain if a request goes unanswered.

A note on this site, since this is the step about leaving: Bare Axis has nothing to leave. There is no account here, no mailing list, and nothing stored in your browser. You can close the tab and that is the end of it.

Before you finish

You should now have a written limit in Australian dollars, a method of enforcing it that is not willpower, a rough position on when the game is played, the vendor's support address in your notes, and an understanding of what stopping, securing and deleting each mean.

That is the course. The checklists page gathers all five lists in printable form, and About explains how the course was put together and reviewed.

Step 5 checklist