Step 3 of 5
Classification, account terms and what you hand over
Registering for an online game takes about two minutes, and the documents you agree to in those two minutes run to many thousands of words. This step is about reading the parts that actually matter, and about finding the Australian classification information that sits outside the vendor's own material entirely.
How classification works in Australia
Australia classifies computer games under a national scheme. The Australian Classification Board makes classification decisions, and the classification markings you see on games sold here come from that scheme rather than from the publisher's own opinion or from a rating used in another country.
Two things about this surprise people. The first is that a classification is specific to a product and can be revisited; a game that has been updated for years may have a decision attached to a particular version. The second is that classification markings come with consumer advice — short descriptions of the content that drove the decision — and that advice is usually more informative than the marking itself for a parent trying to make a judgement.
We do not state a classification for any particular game on this page. Classification decisions are published by the Board, they change, and a figure copied onto a third-party site goes stale. Look it up at the source: classification.gov.au, which explains the categories and holds a searchable record of decisions.
Randomised purchases and young players
Some online games sell items whose contents are randomised at the point of purchase. Where a game does that, it is relevant to any decision about a young person's access to it, and it is worth reading both the classification record and the vendor's own description of what can be bought. Nothing on this site presents randomised purchases or anything resembling gambling as suitable for a minor.
Looking a game up yourself
The process takes a couple of minutes. Open the Classification Board's site, find the search for classification decisions, and enter the exact title of the game. Read three things on the record you find: the classification category, the consumer advice lines attached to it, and the date of the decision. If several records exist for similar titles, the date and the publisher name will usually tell you which one is the current product.
If you cannot find a record, that in itself is information worth noting rather than ignoring, and the Board's own site explains how classification applies to different kinds of material, including digitally distributed games.
What a terms of service document commits you to
A terms of service document for an online game is a contract. Nobody expects you to read every clause, but five areas repay a skim, and you can usually find them with your browser's find-on-page function.
Account ownership. Most online game terms state that the account and the in-game items attached to it remain licensed to you rather than owned by you, and that selling or transferring an account is prohibited. If you were planning to treat purchases as assets, this is the clause that says otherwise.
Conduct and suspension. There will be rules about behaviour, cheating and third-party software, and a statement of what happens when they are broken, up to and including permanent closure of the account. Knowing what counts as a breach is worth more than knowing the penalty.
Changes to the service. Live games change. The terms will reserve the vendor's right to alter, suspend or end parts of the service, and sometimes to change the terms themselves with notice. Look at how notice is given.
Purchases and refunds. Find whatever the document says about buying in-game currency or content, and read it before rather than after any purchase. Australian consumer guarantees still apply here regardless of what the document says, which is covered below.
Inactivity. Some services describe what happens to an account that is unused for a long period. If you expect to play briefly and then stop, it is worth knowing whether anything expires.
Reading the vendor's privacy policy
A game's privacy policy is a separate document from its terms, and the useful questions are short. What do they collect beyond the obvious registration details? Do they share anything with advertising or analytics partners? Where is it stored and processed, which for a global game is often several countries? And how do you ask for a copy of what they hold, or ask for it to be deleted?
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner is the national privacy regulator and publishes plain-English material about what rights people have over their personal information, at oaic.gov.au. Reading their general guidance first makes any individual company's policy much easier to assess.
For the product used as the example in this course, the authoritative privacy and terms documents are the ones published on the vendor's own site, and that is where you should read them. We do not summarise them here, because a summary of a document that can change is a liability rather than a service.
Visit the War Thunder website Paid affiliate link. Registering through it earns Exact Ratio a commission from the affiliate network that operates the link, at no additional cost to you. You can reach the same documents by searching for the vendor directly.
Which details a registration form needs
A sign-up for a game of this kind is normally short, and it helps to know which fields are doing real work.
| Field | Why it is asked for | What to think about |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | Confirming the account, recovering a lost password, and service notices. | Use an address you can reach immediately. The confirmation message is a required step, not an optional one. |
| Nickname or callsign | The name other players see in a match. | Choose something you are content to be seen publicly, and avoid anything that identifies you offline. |
| Password | Protecting the account. | Long, unique to this account, and stored in a password manager rather than reused from elsewhere. |
| Date of birth | Applying age-related restrictions to the account. | Answer accurately. An inaccurate answer undermines the protections the field exists to apply. |
| Country | Regional settings, server choice, applicable terms and currency. | Your actual country of residence. Misstating it can complicate consumer protections later. |
If a sign-up asks for anything beyond this sort of list — a phone number you did not expect, an identity document, a payment method before you have chosen to buy anything — stop and work out why before continuing. That is not necessarily a sign of anything wrong, but it deserves an explanation you have actually found rather than assumed.
Two-factor authentication, where it is offered, is the single most useful thing you can turn on. It means that knowing your password is not enough to get into your account, and online game accounts are a routine target for theft precisely because they accumulate value.
Imitation sign-up pages
Popular games attract imitation. Pages that copy a vendor's appearance and collect credentials, messages offering free in-game currency in exchange for a login, and "account checker" tools are all long-running patterns in this space.
The general defences are unglamorous and effective: reach the vendor's site by typing the address or using a result you have checked, rather than following a link from a chat message; never enter game credentials on a site that is not the vendor's own; and treat an unsolicited offer of something valuable for free as the thing to walk away from.
Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, collects information about current scams and explains how to report one, at scamwatch.gov.au. The Australian Cyber Security Centre's guidance on account security and multi-factor authentication at cyber.gov.au covers the same ground from a technical angle.
Your rights as an Australian consumer
Buying digital content in Australia does not take you outside the Australian Consumer Law. Consumer guarantees apply to goods and services supplied to Australian consumers, and a contract term cannot simply exclude them. If something you paid for is not supplied, or is not fit for its described purpose, that is a matter for the supplier first and, if unresolved, for the relevant consumer protection body.
The ACCC explains how the law works and who to contact at accc.gov.au. This is general information rather than legal advice, and your own circumstances may change what applies.
The worked example
The hypothetical household, Step 3
This household is invented to illustrate the steps. It is not a real family and makes no claim about any product's results.
They look the title up in the Classification Board's record, read the consumer advice attached to the decision, and find it tells them more about the content than the category letter did. They then spend fifteen minutes with the vendor's terms, using find-on-page for the five areas above, and discover the clause about account transfer, which neither of them had thought about.
They decide to create the account on a dedicated email address rather than their shared one, mostly so that service messages do not mix with household mail. They note that two-factor authentication is something to turn on at the first opportunity.
Before you move on
You should have looked the game up on the Classification Board's site yourself, skimmed the five areas of the terms, decided which email address you will use, and decided on a password approach. Step 4 is the step where things actually get installed, and it goes much more smoothly if these decisions are already made.
Checklist for Step 3
- Search the Australian Classification Board record for the exact game title, and read the category, the consumer advice and the date of the decision.
- Open the vendor's terms of service and use find-on-page to check account ownership, conduct and suspension, changes to the service, purchases and refunds, and inactivity.
- Open the vendor's privacy policy and answer four questions: what is collected, what is shared, where it is stored, and how to request access or deletion.
- Decide which email address the account will use, and confirm you can open messages sent to it right now.
- Decide on a password approach: long, unique, and recorded in a password manager rather than reused.
- Check whether the vendor offers two-factor authentication, and plan to turn it on immediately after registering.
- Choose a public nickname that does not identify you offline.
- Confirm you will reach the vendor's site by typing its address rather than following a link from a message or forum post.
- Note where to report a problem: the vendor first, then Scamwatch for scams or the ACCC for consumer matters.