A five-step course on starting your first free-to-play PC game, written for readers in Australia

Each of the five steps takes about eight to twelve minutes to read, so the whole course is roughly an hour if you sit down with it in one go. Most people do not: they read one step, work through its checklist at the computer, and come back the next evening.

The five steps, in order

1. Step 1 — What "free-to-play" actually means Where the money comes from in a game that costs nothing to install, and what that changes for you.
2. Step 2 — Working out whether your computer will run it Reading a requirements list, finding your own specifications, and why the operating system matters first.
3. Step 3 — Accounts, email and what you hand over Making an account you can keep control of, and understanding the confirmation email step.
4. Step 4 — Classification ratings, spending and randomised items Australian classification, how in-game purchases are structured, and setting a limit before you need one.
5. Step 5 — Your first sessions, and keeping it a hobby What the opening hours of a vehicle-combat or team game feel like, and how to decide whether to continue.

The All checklists page gathers all five in one printable place, for people who prefer paper beside the keyboard.

Who this course is for, and who it is not for

This course assumes you can use a computer for ordinary things — email, a browser, buying something online — and that you have never installed an online game on a PC. Plenty of people have played on a phone or a console for years and still find the PC side opaque, because it uses different words for the same ideas.

It is also written for the person standing behind that reader: a parent, a partner, an adult child helping someone older. Several sections address a household rather than an individual, because the questions that cause trouble — who pays, who has the password, what happens on a shared machine — are household questions.

It is not for you if you already know what a GPU is and want a comparison of specific titles; nothing here will be new. It is also not a substitute for advice about problem gambling or problem gaming. If spending or time already feels out of control in your household, Step 4 is too general to help, and the services named there are a better starting point.

The one checklist to do before anything else

Four answers, ten minutes. Almost every difficulty described in the rest of this course traces back to one of them being skipped.

What you will be able to do when you finish

Read a game's own description and say where its revenue comes from. Open a requirements list and decide, without asking anyone, whether your machine qualifies. Hold an account whose recovery you control. Look up an Australian classification rating and recognise a randomised in-game item for what it is. And judge, from your own first few sessions rather than from someone else's opinion, whether a particular game deserves more of your time.

What you can do without spending money

All of it. Every step of this course is reading and checking; nothing here requires a purchase. Many online PC games are offered on a free-to-play basis, meaning the client download and an account cost nothing and the publisher earns from optional purchases afterwards. Step 1 explains what that model implies and what it does not. The checklists are free to use and free to print, and we sell nothing ourselves.

A worked example runs through the course

From Step 2 onward, a hypothetical household appears: two adults and one teenager sharing one desktop computer in a living room. They are invented for teaching purposes, with no names and no opinions about any product. Their role is to make abstract advice concrete — to show what "decide who controls the recovery email" looks like when three people share one machine.

Where a specific title appears in this course, and why

One title, Crossout, appears in Steps 2, 3 and 5 as a concrete instance of a free-to-play PC game, because an example with real constraints teaches more than an invented one. Its vendor describes it as a free-to-play MMO vehicle-combat game set in post-apocalyptic realities, built around vehicles players construct and modify themselves, and states that it runs on desktop Windows and Linux, with macOS not supported.

Links to that title are paid affiliate links, as described in the box above and in full on the Affiliate Disclosure page.

Visit the Crossout website Paid affiliate link. This publisher is paid a commission if you create and confirm an account after following it; your cost is unchanged.

Australian organisations worth knowing about

The steps point to Australian bodies that publish free material of their own: the Australian Classification Board, the eSafety Commissioner, Scamwatch, the ACCC, the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the OAIC. Each is described where it comes up, and linked rather than paraphrased.

How this course is written and kept current

The five steps were drafted as one sequence rather than as separate articles, so each assumes the vocabulary introduced before it and nothing else. Statements about any specific product come only from what that product's vendor publishes; where the vendor is silent, the course says so instead of guessing. The course is reviewed as a whole and the review date appears in every footer. The About page sets out the method in more detail, including the commercial relationship behind the links.

Short answers to common questions

Do I need to read the steps in order?

Steps 1 and 2 are worth reading in order; later steps use their vocabulary. Steps 3, 4 and 5 stand up on their own.

Is there anything to sign up for?

No. This site has no accounts, no newsletter and no forms, and nothing is stored in your browser.

Will you tell me which game to play?

No. Step 5 is about judging a game from your own first sessions rather than from someone else's verdict.