Reading the terms, the charges and the classification

Where the documents live

Every game of any size publishes the same small set of documents, and they are nearly always linked from the very bottom of the vendor's home page in small text. You are looking for four of them: terms of service or terms of use, a privacy notice or privacy policy, a support or help centre, and sometimes a separate subscription or payment page.

Read them on the vendor's own site, reached by typing the address yourself or by following a link from a page you trust. The terms that matter are the ones on the site you will actually be buying from, and copies posted elsewhere can be out of date by years.

Open them in a second tab and keep your Step 2 answers next to you. You are not reading for comprehension. You are checking a handful of specific things, and the rest can go unread without guilt.

The clauses worth finding, and what to ignore

Use the search function in your browser — Ctrl+F on Windows, Command+F on a Mac — and search the terms for a few words rather than reading top to bottom.

Search for “renew”. This finds the automatic renewal wording: whether a subscription continues by itself, how often it is charged, and how much notice there is. A subscription that renews automatically is normal; one whose cancellation terms you cannot find is a reason to pause.

Search for “cancel”. You want to know the method: a button in the account area, an email to support, or cancelling through the app store that took the payment. The method decides how Step 5 ends, and it is much easier to find now than on the day you want to use it.

Search for “refund”. Note what the vendor says it will and will not refund, especially for in-game currency that has already been spent. Note it as the vendor's position, not as the last word; the next section explains why.

Search for “age” or “minimum”. Many vendors set a minimum age for an account and require a parent or guardian to hold or approve the account below a certain age. If you are setting this up for a child, this clause tells you whose name the account must be in.

Search for “suspend” or “terminate”. This is the vendor's right to close an account for breaking the rules. It is in every set of terms and it is not sinister; it is worth a glance so that nobody in the household is surprised by it.

What you can skip: the clauses on intellectual property, on changes to the terms, on assignment, and the long list of definitions. They are standard, you cannot negotiate them, and they will not affect the decision you are making this week.

Three different kinds of charge

Step 1 covered the charging models. Here you find the actual mechanisms on the actual page, because a single game often uses more than one at once, and each needs a different control in Step 4.

A recurring charge is the membership or subscription: a set amount at a set interval. It is the easiest to see on a bank statement and the easiest to forget about. Find the interval and the method of cancelling, and note whether a longer term is cheaper per month, which is only a saving if the game is still being played in month ten.

A currency purchase is a one-off payment that becomes coins, gems or stars inside the game. It is a second, separate tap, and the amount spent inside the game afterwards is invisible on any statement. A household can keep perfect track of the subscription and lose track of this entirely.

A randomised purchase is one where money buys an unknown item: a box, a crate, a draw. If a game you are considering for a child sells these, treat it as a specific thing to decide about rather than a detail. Paying for an unknown outcome is a different proposition from paying for a known item, and a child should not meet it by accident. Where a vendor describes nothing of this kind, this course does not assume it exists.

For Star Stable Online, the horse-riding game this course is paid to link to, what the affiliate programme states is that signing up is free and that purchases can be made later; the structure, the current amounts and the Australian dollar prices are on the vendor's pages, which is where this question should be settled.

Visit the Star Stable Online website

Paid link. A commission is paid to us by the affiliate network that operates the link if you create an account after following it. You pay no more for it, and no part of this step was written because of it.

Looking up the Australian classification

Games made available in Australia are classified, and a rating with consumer advice is the single most useful piece of information about whether a game suits a particular child. It comes from a government body rather than from a shop or a review.

The lookup takes a minute:

1. Open the Australian Classification Board website.
2. Use its search to look up the title you are considering, spelled as the vendor spells it.
3. Read the classification shown and, just as importantly, the consumer advice beside it — the short phrase describing why the rating was given.
4. If a title does not appear, note that rather than substituting a guess. Search results from other sites are not classifications.
5. Write the rating and the consumer advice down with your other Step 3 notes.

Two things this course will not do: state a rating for any particular game, and state the age thresholds that attach to each classification. Both come from the Board, both can change, and quoting either from memory would be the kind of unsourced claim this site avoids. Read them from the Board's own page.

Alongside the rating, the eSafety Commissioner publishes material on what contact with other players can involve and on the conversations worth having before a child starts. Rating and contact are separate questions and both are worth an answer.

Refunds and your rights as an Australian buyer

A vendor's refund policy is the vendor's policy. In Australia it sits alongside the consumer guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law, and a term in a contract does not remove rights the law gives you.

The ACCC administers that law and publishes plain-language guidance on consumer guarantees, on refunds and on what businesses may claim about their products. If a game is faulty, or is not as described, the ACCC's material is the place to read what you are entitled to ask for rather than a forum.

The ACCC is also the body behind the prohibition on misleading or deceptive conduct in trade. A vendor must not tell you something untrue about what you are buying, and that applies to how a price or a free offer is described.

Where a purchase was made through Apple's App Store or Google Play, the refund request usually goes to the store rather than to the game vendor, because the store took the money. Note which applies to your chosen device while you are here, because it is the same answer you will need in Step 5.

Finally, if money leaves an account in a way nobody in the household recognises, or a message about the game asks for a login or a payment, Scamwatch describes how those approaches work and takes reports. The first move is always to open the vendor's own site or app directly rather than to follow the message.

Reading the privacy notice in four minutes

A privacy notice says what the vendor collects and what it does with it. You can get most of the value from it with three searches.

Search for “children” to find whatever the vendor says about accounts for younger players, which is often where the parental consent arrangements are described. Search for “advertising” or “third part” to find whether information is shared with others for marketing. Search for “delete” to find how to close the account and have the data removed when the household is done, which is a Step 5 question you can answer early.

If you want to know what good handling of personal information looks like in Australian terms, the OAIC is the national privacy regulator and publishes the Australian Privacy Principles and guidance for the public. Our own handling is described on our Privacy Policy page, which is short because this site collects almost nothing.

Before you move on

• You know how the game charges, how often, and precisely how a charge is stopped.
• You have the rating and consumer advice from the Classification Board, written down.
• You know whether the account must be in an adult's name for this player's age.
• You know who to ask for a refund — the vendor or the app store — before you need to ask.

Step 4 is the only step that asks you to do something irreversible, which is why it comes after this one. If the notes you have just made do not match the figures from Step 2, stop here; that mismatch is the answer.