What an online game account actually is

The three ways a game asks for money

Nearly every game you will meet charges in one of three ways, and almost all of the confusion in this category comes from not knowing which one you are looking at.

The first is a one-off purchase. You pay a price once, you own a licence to play that game, and nothing further is taken from your card. Most games sold in a shop or on a console store work this way. It is the easiest to budget for and the least common among games that are played with other people over the internet.

The second is free to install with purchases inside it. Downloading costs nothing and you can play without paying, but the game sells extra things once you are in: outfits, extra areas, speed-ups, or a bundle of in-game currency you buy with real money and then spend inside the game. The total you spend is whatever you choose to spend, which sounds reassuring and is the exact reason this model needs a limit set in advance.

The third is a subscription. You pay a repeating amount — monthly, quarterly or yearly — and it keeps being taken until someone cancels it. A subscription usually opens the larger part of a game, with a smaller free version available to anyone who has not paid. Many online games combine the second and third: a subscription for access, plus a separate currency for items.

A game can also move between models over its life. A title that launched as a one-off purchase can add a subscription years later. This is why Step 3 asks you to read the current terms rather than rely on what a friend paid in 2022.

What the word “online” adds

An online game is one that needs a live internet connection to be played, because the state of the game lives on the vendor's computers rather than on yours. When you move your character, your device tells a server, and the server tells everyone else playing.

Three consequences follow from that, and they are the reason this course exists.

The first is that you do not control the game. The vendor can change it, add to it, take parts away, or eventually switch the servers off. You are paying for access to something they run, not for a copy of something you keep.

The second is that other people are present. Depending on the game and its settings, your child may be able to see messages from strangers, or chat with them. The eSafety Commissioner, Australia's online safety regulator, publishes guidance for parents and carers on exactly this, and it is worth reading alongside Step 4 where the settings are covered.

The third is that the connection matters. A game that only needs to load once can cope with a poor connection; a game that is talking to a server many times a second cannot. Step 2 covers what to check.

What a game account is, and why games want one

An account is the record the vendor keeps of you: usually an email address, a password, and whatever you have bought or earned. It exists because the progress has to be stored somewhere other than the device, so that the same character appears when you log in from the tablet instead of the laptop.

That is the honest reason, and it is a good one. There are secondary reasons as well. An account lets the vendor contact you, lets them apply a subscription to the right person, and lets them see how often the game is played. None of that is sinister, but it does mean the account is a small pile of personal information held by a company, and it is worth putting it in the right place from the start.

In practice, “the right place” means an adult's email address rather than a child's, a password that is not used anywhere else, and a payment method that an adult controls. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes plain-language advice on passwords and on multi-factor authentication, which is the setting that asks for a second code when someone logs in from a new device. Step 4 walks through turning it on in general terms.

One warning that belongs here rather than later: the moment an account exists, it becomes something worth stealing, and a standard trick is a message claiming your account is suspended, or offering free in-game currency, with a link to a convincing fake login page. Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, describes how this kind of approach works and takes reports about it. The rule that covers nearly all of it is to open the game or the vendor's site yourself rather than following a link someone sent you.

Clients, launchers and app stores

To play an online game on a computer you normally install a small program first. It may be called a client or a launcher. Its job is to download the game, keep it updated, and log you in. On a phone or tablet the equivalent is simply the app, installed from Apple's App Store or Google Play, which handles the updating for you.

Where the game comes from matters more than the file size. Installing from the official app store, or from the vendor's own website typed into the address bar yourself, avoids nearly all of the trouble in this area. Search results and video descriptions are where modified installers tend to live.

You do not need to understand what the launcher is doing. You only need to know that it will ask to run when the computer starts, that it will download large updates from time to time, and that it is the thing you uninstall at the end if the household moves on. Step 5 covers that part.

“Free” is a word with several meanings

In this category, “free” might mean free to download, free to make an account, free to play a limited part, or free for a trial period after which a charge begins. These are genuinely different and the difference is usually written down somewhere on the vendor's own page.

The Australian Consumer Law prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct in trade, and the ACCC, which administers it, publishes guidance about how prices and offers must be described. If something on a store page seems to contradict itself, you are allowed to treat that as a problem with the page rather than a failure of your own reading.

Where a vendor states nothing about price, this course says nothing about price. For Star Stable Online — the online horse-riding game this site is paid to link to, and the only paid link in the course — what the affiliate programme states is that an account can be created and the game started at no cost, and that purchases can be made later. Current prices in Australian dollars are a question for the vendor's own site, because we have not been given them and will not invent them.

Glossary for this step

Server

A computer run by the vendor that holds the live state of the game and talks to every player's device.

Client or launcher

The program installed on your computer that downloads, updates and starts the game.

Subscription

A repeating charge, usually monthly or yearly, that continues until it is cancelled.

In-game currency

Coins or gems bought with real money and spent inside the game. One purchase of real money can become many purchases inside the game.

Microtransaction

A small individual purchase made inside a game, often for an item or a convenience.

Free-to-play

A game that costs nothing to install and play in some form, and earns money from purchases inside it.

Multi-factor authentication

A login that needs a second piece of evidence, such as a code from an app, in addition to the password.

Before you move on

• You can name which of the three charging models a game uses, and say so in one sentence.
• You know that an online game lives on someone else's computers, and what follows from that.
• You know what the account holds and whose email and card it should sit on.
• You know that installers belong to official stores and vendor sites, not to search results.

If any of those is still vague, the section above it is short enough to read again before you carry on. Step 2 asks you to make decisions, and it is easier with these in place.