Step 4 of 5

Classification ratings, spending and randomised items

This is the household step. It covers where Australian classification information comes from, how money moves inside a game that costs nothing to install, and how to settle the spending question before anyone needs to argue about it.

How classification works in Australia

Australia has its own system for classifying films and computer games, administered through the Australian Classification Board. A classification is a decision about a particular piece of content, recorded publicly, and it is specific to this country — it is not the European or North American rating with a different badge.

That matters for games in two practical ways. A title you read about on an overseas site may carry a different classification here, and some games distributed digitally are classified through arrangements that differ from a boxed release. Rather than state any rating, category or age threshold ourselves, we point you at the Board, which publishes its own decisions and explains its own categories. Any figure you see quoted without a link to that source is worth treating with suspicion, including on this site if we ever slipped.

Looking up a game's classification

The consumer advice lines are the part most people overlook. A category letter compresses a judgement into a single symbol; the accompanying phrases tell you which elements drove it, which is what you actually want to know.

What a rating does not cover

A classification describes the content the publisher submitted. It does not describe what other people will say to you inside the game.

Online games with voice or text chat put you in contact with strangers, and no classification system rates strangers. If that matters in your household — and with younger players it usually does — the thing to look at is what the game lets you switch off: chat channels, voice, messages from people not on your friends list, and whether the publisher provides reporting and blocking tools. Find those settings before the first session, not after an unpleasant one.

The eSafety Commissioner is Australia's independent regulator for online safety and publishes free guidance for parents and carers about online gaming, in-game contact and how to report serious online abuse. That is a better source on this subject than anything we could write, and it is kept current by people whose job it is.

How in-game money is structured

Step 1 introduced premium currency: a token bought with real money and spent inside the game. The structure is worth a closer look, because it is designed to be slightly opaque and understanding it restores the clarity.

In a typical arrangement there are two currencies. One is earned by playing. The other is bought with real money, usually in bundles whose sizes do not match the prices of the things you can buy with them. The practical effect is that you are frequently left holding a remainder that is not enough for anything, which is a gentle pressure towards a further purchase.

The second effect is distance. Once money has become tokens, and tokens have become points, a purchase inside the game no longer feels like spending Australian dollars. This is not a trick peculiar to games — it is the same reason casinos use chips — but it is worth naming, because naming it is most of the defence.

So the habit to build is simple: before buying anything inside a game, convert the price back into AUD out loud. If the answer sounds like a reasonable thing to spend on a hobby, buy it. If converting it back makes you hesitate, the hesitation is information.

Randomised items

Some games sell items whose contents are randomised: you pay a fixed amount and receive one of several possible things, decided by chance at the moment of opening. These go by various names, and the mechanism is the same regardless of the name.

Two things are worth saying plainly. The first is that the expected value of a randomised purchase is not the value of the best thing it can contain, and the presentation usually emphasises the best thing. The second is that this structure resembles gambling closely enough that it is the subject of ongoing public and regulatory discussion in Australia and elsewhere. We are not going to summarise where that discussion currently stands, because it moves and because a stale summary would be worse than none; the ACCC and the Australian Government's classification material are the places to check the current position.

For a household the practical rule is narrower and does not depend on how the law settles. Randomised purchases are not suitable for children and young people, and should not be presented to them as a normal part of playing. If a game in your house sells them, that is a conversation to have explicitly, and a reason to keep payment details off the account a young person uses.

If spending of this kind is already causing difficulty for someone in your household, this page is too general to help. A general practitioner or a specialist gambling support service is the right next step, and the matter is more urgent than any question about a game.

Setting a limit before you need one

The useful moment to decide how much a hobby can cost is before it has begun, when nothing is at stake and you are not mid-session. Decide on a figure in Australian dollars per month, say it to whoever else lives with you, and write it on the same note that holds your computer specifications from Step 2.

A sensible default for a first month is zero. Not out of principle, but because you do not yet know whether you will still be playing in four weeks, and the first month is the period in which a game is working hardest to secure a purchase. Deciding in advance to spend nothing until a month has passed costs you nothing and removes every in-game offer from consideration at a stroke.

Payment details on a shared computer

Where card details are saved determines how easy spending is, and on a shared machine that is a household decision rather than a technical one.

Avoid storing card details in a game account or launcher that more than one person uses. If a payment method must be available, prefer one that requires explicit authorisation each time. Many operating systems and app stores offer parental controls that require approval for purchases; the settings vary by platform, so look them up for the specific system in front of you rather than following a general description.

Check the statement occasionally. Small, frequent in-game purchases are easy to miss individually and surprising in aggregate, and the point of looking is to notice the pattern early rather than to catch anyone.

Your rights as a consumer in Australia

The Australian Consumer Law applies to goods and services supplied to consumers in Australia, including many digital products, and it is administered by the ACCC together with state and territory agencies. Among other things, it prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct in trade or commerce and provides consumer guarantees that cannot be excluded by a business's own terms.

How that applies to a particular in-game purchase from an overseas publisher is a question with real complications, and we are not in a position to answer it for your situation. What we can usefully say is where to look: the ACCC's own site explains the consumer guarantees and how to complain, and that is the appropriate starting point if you believe something was misrepresented to you. Keep the receipt or confirmation email for any purchase, which costs nothing and makes any later conversation easier.