Classification, in-game purchases and randomised items
This is the step to read with everyone who will use the computer. It covers how a game is classified in Australia, how to find that classification yourself, what the different kinds of in-game purchase look like once money is involved, and how to decide in advance what the household's answer is. It takes about twenty minutes to read.
Who classifies computer games in Australia
Computer games sold or made available in Australia are classified under the national classification scheme. The body that does the classifying, and the official source for what a given classification means, is the Australian Classification Board. Its website publishes the classification categories, the consumer advice system that goes with them, and the national database of titles that have been classified.
This course deliberately does not reproduce the categories, the age markings or any rule about which games require which classification. Those details are set by law and policy and they change; the Board's own site is always the current version, and a page like this one repeating them from memory is exactly how out-of-date information spreads. Read it there.
What this course can usefully tell you is the habit: before anyone in the house installs a game, look it up. It takes a minute, it is free, and it moves the conversation from opinion to a published classification.
Looking a title up yourself
- Open classification.gov.au in your browser. Type the address yourself rather than following a link from a forum.
- Use the site's search for classification decisions and enter the exact title of the game.
- Read the classification recorded against it and, importantly, the consumer advice that sits underneath — the short phrases describing why it received that classification.
- Check the date of the decision. Online games change over years, and a decision records the game as it was assessed.
- If a title does not appear, that is information too. It means you cannot rely on a published Australian classification for it, and the decision falls back to your own judgement and whatever the vendor states.
Many online storefronts display a classification marking on the game's page. Treat that as a signpost and the Board's own record as the source; the storefront is reproducing information, not issuing it.
Consumer advice lines, and what they are for
The short phrases that accompany a classification are the most useful part for a household decision, because they describe content rather than assigning a number. A parent trying to decide whether a game suits a particular twelve-year-old will learn more from the consumer advice than from the category letter, because they know their own child and the Board does not.
Worth remembering: a classification describes the game as supplied. It does not describe the people you will meet in it. An online game's chat is created by whoever is playing at the time, and no classification system covers that. The eSafety Commissioner publishes material specifically on online gaming and contact with strangers, which is the better source for that half of the question, and Step 5 of this course returns to it.
The two-currency problem
Once you are inside a game, prices are frequently not in dollars. You buy a quantity of an in-game currency with real money, then spend that currency on items. The quantities on sale rarely divide neatly into the prices of the items, so there is usually a little left over, which is a sales technique rather than an accident.
The habit that defeats all of this is boring and effective: before buying anything, work out the price of the item in Australian dollars. Divide the dollar cost of the currency pack by the number of tokens it contains, multiply by the number of tokens the item costs, and say the resulting figure out loud. An item that sounded like “eight hundred credits” becomes a number you can compare with other things you buy, and the comparison usually answers the question by itself.
A second habit: never buy a currency pack larger than the item you intend to buy. Leftover currency is a reason to come back and spend again, and it is the most common way a planned purchase becomes an unplanned second one.
Randomised items
A randomised item is a purchase where you pay a known amount and receive an unknown result: a container, a crate or a draw whose contents are revealed after the transaction. The item you want may be in it. It may not be.
Treat this category differently from the other three described in Step 1, for three reasons. The price per outcome is unknown, so you cannot do the dollar arithmetic above. The structure rewards repetition, because not getting the thing you wanted is itself a reason to try again. And the psychology involved is close enough to gambling that it is the subject of ongoing regulatory attention in Australia and elsewhere.
On that last point, this course states no rule and no threshold of its own. The Australian Classification Board's site is the place to read what the classification scheme currently requires of games containing paid randomised items or simulated gambling content, and what markings such games must carry. If a game you are considering sells them, check the Board's record and advice for that title before anyone buys anything.
Paid randomised items are not suitable for children, and nothing in this course should be read as suggesting otherwise. The straightforward protections are practical ones: no stored payment method on a young person's account, platform or operating-system controls that require an adult to approve a purchase, and an agreement in the house that randomised purchases are simply not bought. If you want to understand the broader online-safety side of gaming, the eSafety Commissioner is the national regulator and publishes guidance for parents and carers.
Setting a household rule before you need one
The value of a rule is that it is decided when nobody wants anything. Deciding in the middle of a limited-time offer is not deciding; it is reacting. A rule does not need to be elaborate. Three sentences on the fridge is a working policy:
A hypothetical household policy, written as an illustration. It describes no real family and no real purchase.
“Nothing is bought in any game during the first month. After that, cosmetic items only, a maximum of twenty dollars a month across all games, and nothing randomised at all. Any purchase gets written in the notebook next to the computer with the date and the amount.”
The notebook matters more than the figure. In-game spending is unusually easy to lose track of, because the payments are small, frequent and not described in dollars at the moment they happen. A written line per purchase turns a vague feeling into a number at the end of the month, and the number is what makes the rule self-correcting.
Payment hygiene
- Do not store a card on the account unless you genuinely intend to buy things regularly. Entering the details each time is a useful speed bump.
- Keep game purchases off a card with a large limit. A prepaid card, or a secondary account holding a set amount, puts a hard ceiling on a soft decision.
- Turn on purchase notifications from your bank if they are available, so a purchase is visible the same day rather than at the end of the month.
- Check the statement line the first time you buy, so you know what the game's charges look like and would notice one you did not make.
- Never buy currency or accounts from a third party. Outside the game's own shop you have no consumer protection worth the name, and account trading is usually against the game's own terms.
If something goes wrong with a paid item
Paying for a digital item is a consumer transaction. The Australian Consumer Law provides consumer guarantees for goods and services supplied to consumers in Australia, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission publishes plain-English material on how those guarantees work and on what to do when a business does not honour them. If a purchase does not arrive, is not what was described, or does not work, start by reading the ACCC's guidance and then raising it with the seller.
If the problem is not a faulty product but a message or a site that was pretending to be the game company, that is a scam rather than a consumer dispute, and Scamwatch is where to read about it and report it.
Raw Segment cannot help with either. We are not the vendor, we hold no accounts and we have no access to anyone's purchase history. Our own role is described on the Affiliate Disclosure page.
A sensible first month
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| Before installing | Look up the classification and the consumer advice. Agree the household rule and write it down. |
| Week one | Play without buying anything. Learn what the in-game currency is called and what it buys. |
| Week two | If an item is tempting, convert its price to Australian dollars and write the figure in the notebook without buying it. |
| Week three | Look at the figures you wrote down. Decide whether the game is still being played enough to justify any of them. |
| End of month one | Review the rule. Keep it, change it deliberately, or decide the game is not for you and uninstall it. |
You should now know where to look a game's Australian classification up, what the consumer advice lines add, how to convert an in-game price back into dollars, why randomised items are in a category of their own, and what your household's written rule says. Step 5 is the last one, and it is about the first few sessions.
Checklist 4 — before any money moves
- Look the title up on classification.gov.au and read both the classification and the consumer advice.
- Note the date of the classification decision.
- Write the household spending rule down, in dollars per month, and put it where the computer is.
- Decide, in advance, whether randomised items are bought at all. For a household with children, the answer is no.
- Find out what the in-game currency is called and what one dollar buys of it.
- Practise the conversion once on an item you are not going to buy.
- Decide whether a payment method is stored on the account, and prefer not storing one.
- Turn on bank notifications for card purchases if your bank offers them.
- Start a notebook line for every purchase: date, item, amount in Australian dollars.
- Check whether the platform or operating system offers purchase approval controls, and turn them on for any young person's account.
- Read the ACCC's consumer guarantees material once, before you need it.
- Agree who in the household is asked before any purchase over the agreed amount.