Step 5 of 5
Living with it: updates, spending and time
The first four steps happen once. This one is a habit that takes two minutes a month, plus one slightly longer afternoon at the end when the household moves on. Reading it takes about eleven minutes.
The two-minute monthly review
Pick a day of the month that already exists in your life — the day a bill lands, or the first Sunday — and attach three questions to it.
What was charged this month, in Australian dollars? Is it still being played? Do the figures you wrote down in Step 2 still look right to you?
That is the whole review. The value is not in the answers on any single month, it is that the question gets asked at all. Subscriptions survive on nobody asking, and a game that stopped being played in April is usually noticed in November.
If the answer to “is it still being played” is no for two months running, cancel it. The account and the progress generally remain if it is restarted later, and the section on ending cleanly below covers how to check that before cancelling.
Reading the statement without an argument
Game charges appear on a statement in ways that are not always obvious. A subscription may be billed by the vendor under a company name you do not recognise, or by Apple or Google if it was bought through a store, in which case several unrelated purchases can arrive as one amount.
Where purchases went through an app store, the store's own purchase history is the clearer record: both Apple and Google let the account holder see every purchase individually, which is far easier than reconstructing it from a bank statement.
Two habits make the money visible without anyone being interrogated. Keep the receipts arriving at the adult's email address rather than filtering them away, and look at the in-game currency balance occasionally, because spending currency that was bought last month leaves no trace on this month's statement.
If a charge appears that nobody can account for, start with the store's purchase history, then the vendor's support page. If it still makes no sense, your bank and Scamwatch are the right places — the latter collects reports and describes how unauthorised charges and account takeovers typically occur.
What tends to happen, and when
A rough shape of the first year, offered as general guidance rather than a prediction about any particular household.
| When | What usually needs attention |
|---|---|
| Week one | Heavy play and the first large update. Confirm the charge that appeared matches what you expected, and that nothing was bought by accident. |
| Weeks two to four | The first request for in-game currency, usually tied to something the game has introduced. This is the moment your Step 2 ceiling exists for. |
| Month two or three | Interest either settles into a routine or drops off sharply. Either answer is useful; the second one is the cue to cancel. |
| Month four to six | Storage fills up and updates get larger. A good time to check free space and to review whether the device is still the right one. |
| Around month twelve | Annual renewals land. If a longer term was bought for the discount, this is where to decide rather than to let it continue. |
Updates, storage and the machine getting slower
Online games update often, because the vendor is running a live service. Updates can be large, and installed games tend to grow rather than shrink over a year.
Two consequences are worth a moment each quarter. The first is storage: check the free space on the device and, if it is tight, remove something other than the game rather than letting the device fill completely, which makes everything on it slower. The second is scheduling: let updates happen at a time when nobody needs the connection, which on most devices is a setting rather than a chore.
Keep the device's own operating system updated as well. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes advice on updates for home users, and the short version is that automatic updates are the right default for a household device.
If the game genuinely runs badly after a year, that is usually the hardware aging rather than anything wrong, and the choices are the ones from Step 2: use the other device, lower the game's quality settings, or accept it. It is not a reason to install a tool that promises to speed up the computer.
Nothing about an ordinary game account requires a cleaner, an optimiser or an extra security product. If a page tells you that your device is at risk or needs scanning because you installed a game, close it; that claim is not coming from the game vendor or from any Australian authority.
Time, which is usually the real subject
Most households that argue about a game are not arguing about money. They are arguing about when it stops.
Two things make that easier, and neither is software. The first is a rule set in advance — on which days, for how long — rather than a judgement made each evening. The second is a warning before the end rather than an abrupt one, because online games are played with other people and leaving mid-activity has a social cost that looks like defiance from the doorway.
Where a rule is needed with more force than a reminder, the device's own time limits from Step 4 do it without anyone having to be the enforcer. The eSafety Commissioner publishes practical material for parents and carers on screen time and on agreements that households can make together, which is more useful than any figure this course could offer.
A note on balance: playing an online game is an ordinary hobby, and this course takes no view on how much of it is right for any particular person. The point of the monthly review is visibility, not restriction.
Keeping an established account out of trouble
An account with purchases on it becomes worth stealing, and most attempts arrive as messages rather than as anything technical: a warning that the account is suspended, an offer of free currency, an invitation to a trading site, each with a link to a convincing copy of the login page.
The habit that defeats nearly all of it is simple enough for a child to learn: never log in from a link. Open the game, or type the vendor's address, and if there is really a message waiting it will be there too.
Alongside that, keep the second factor working — if the phone holding the codes is replaced, move the codes across — and treat an unexpected password-reset email as a signal to log in directly and check the account rather than to click anything in the email. Scamwatch is the place to report an attempt, and the ACSC publishes guidance on what to do if an account has already been taken over.
Ending it cleanly
Stopping is part of the course, and it is better done deliberately than by cancelling a card.
Cancel first, using the exact method you wrote down in Step 3 and confirmed in Step 4 — the vendor's account area, or the subscription section of the app store if the store took the payment. Then confirm the cancellation in writing: either a confirmation email or a screen saying when access ends.
Access usually continues until the end of the period already paid for, so cancelling does not normally mean losing the rest of the month. Check what the vendor's own wording says rather than assuming either way.
If the household may come back, cancelling the subscription is enough and the account can sit dormant. If the decision is final, ask for the account to be deleted, using the method you found in the privacy notice in Step 3; this also removes the personal information held with it. Then uninstall the game and the launcher from the device, which recovers the storage.
One last check a month later: look at the statement to confirm no further charge arrived. Cancellations occasionally do not take effect, and the only way to know is to look.
If a charge continues after a documented cancellation, that is a consumer issue, and the ACCC publishes guidance on how to complain and on what rights apply under the Australian Consumer Law.
The worked example
The hypothetical household from the earlier steps — an illustration, not a real family, and making no claim about how any game performed — reaches week eight and does the review for the first time.
The charge matches what they expected. The game is being played about three evenings a week. One currency purchase was requested and approved at a level inside their ceiling, which they record on the same card as the rest.
At month five the laptop's free space is down to 20 GB, so they clear out old video files rather than the game. At month nine play has stopped, and they cancel at the second consecutive review that says so, keeping the confirmation email. The account stays dormant rather than being deleted, in case the interest returns.
In total, the review has cost them about twenty minutes across the year.
Before you finish
- A date in the month exists on which someone asks the three questions.
- You know where the purchase history lives: the vendor's account area or the app store's.
- Everyone in the household knows not to log in from a link.
- You know how this ends: cancel, confirm in writing, optionally delete, uninstall, then check the statement once.
That is the course. If you would like the six checklists in one place to print, they are on the All checklists page, and the first one is the five-minute round to do before anything else.
The one product this course is paid to link to
Stated again at the end rather than only at the start: Star Stable Online is an online horse-riding game for desktop computers, phones and tablets, and the link below is a paid affiliate link. The affiliate programme states that signing up is free and that purchases can be made later; anything more specific belongs to the vendor's own pages.
Visit the Star Stable Online website
Paid link. If you create an account after following it, the affiliate network that operates the link pays us a commission. Your price is the same, and the five steps you have just read would be identical without it. The full explanation is on our Affiliate Disclosure page.
Morning round · Step 5
Step 5 checklist
The first four are monthly. The last two are for the day the household moves on.
- Note what was charged this month in Australian dollars, from the vendor's or the store's purchase history.
- Note whether it is still being played, and how often.
- Compare both against the two figures from Step 2 and write down whether they still hold.
- Once a quarter, check free storage, that updates are automatic, and that the second factor still reaches a phone in use.
- To stop: cancel by the recorded method, keep the written confirmation, and note the date access ends.
- A month after cancelling, check the statement once to confirm nothing further was charged.