Step 1 of 5

What a free-to-play online game actually is

This first step is only reading — there is nothing to install and nothing to decide. By the end of it you should be able to explain to somebody else how a game that costs nothing to download pays its staff, and which parts of such a game usually sit behind a payment.

What the words "free-to-play" cover

Free-to-play describes a game you can obtain, install and play without paying anything at the start. The phrase says nothing about whether the game can take money from you later, and it is the second half that beginners usually miss.

It helps to separate three different things that the one word "free" is doing. First, free to obtain: no purchase before you download. Second, free to use: you can keep playing indefinitely without paying. Third, free of commercial intent: nobody is trying to sell you anything inside it. Most large free-to-play games are the first two and are definitely not the third. That is not a trick; it is the business model, printed openly in the game's own store pages.

The opposite arrangement — pay once, own the whole game — still exists, and plenty of games are sold that way. A third arrangement is a subscription, where you pay monthly for access and stop paying when you stop playing. Knowing which of the three you are dealing with before you install is most of what Step 1 is for.

Where the money actually comes from

A large online game is expensive to run even after it is built. There are servers to rent, staff to answer support tickets, people writing updates, and bandwidth every time a few gigabytes of new content reach a few million computers. If none of that is paid for at the front door, it is paid for somewhere else, and the common sources are worth naming.

The first is cosmetic sales: paint schemes, decals, name tags, sound packs — items that change how your things look without changing what they do. The second is convenience sales: something that saves time, such as faster progress towards the next piece of equipment you would otherwise earn by playing. The third is content packs: a bundle of vehicles, maps, characters or campaigns sold as a unit. The fourth is a membership or premium account, a recurring fee that usually improves the rate at which you earn in-game rewards. The fifth is advertising or sponsorship, which is more common in mobile games than on desktop.

A sixth exists and deserves its own paragraph: randomised purchasable items, sometimes called loot boxes, where you pay a known amount for an unknown item. Whether a particular game uses them is a question of fact about that game, and you should check its store page rather than assume. In Australia, the Australian Classification Board publishes classifications and consumer advice for games distributed here, and its site is the right place to look up what a specific title has been given. This course does not state any rating or legal threshold for a specific game, because we would be guessing; we point you at the source instead. A game with purchasable randomised items is not something to set up for a child without reading that classification and consumer advice first.

What usually sits behind a payment

Reading a game's store page with the five revenue sources in mind turns a wall of marketing into a short list of facts. Three questions answer most of it.

Can I reach the whole game by playing, with time instead of money? In many free-to-play games the answer is yes but slowly: the paid route compresses months into hours. Decide whether the slow route sounds like the thing you wanted to do anyway, because if it does, the paid route is not aimed at you.

Does paying change what other players experience? A cosmetic purchase does not. A purchase that makes your equipment stronger does, and some players mind that a great deal. There is no correct answer here, only your own preference, but it is better formed before you have spent eighty hours in a game.

Is anything time-limited? Seasonal content that disappears is the mechanism most likely to make a calm person spend money quickly. Noticing it in advance costs nothing and takes the pressure out of it.

What the word "online" adds

An online game adds three things that a single-player game does not have: an account, a connection and other people.

The account is a login held by the publisher, usually tied to an email address. It holds your progress, your purchases and sometimes a payment method. It is worth treating with the same care as a shopping account, which Step 3 and Step 4 deal with in detail. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes free, general guidance on passwords and multi-factor authentication that applies here as it does anywhere else.

The connection matters in two ways: the size of the first download, and the steadiness of the link while you play. A several-gigabyte download on a metered or shared connection is worth planning rather than starting at random, and Step 2 includes a place to write down what your connection actually is.

Other people are the part no checklist fully covers. A large game has voice chat, text chat and strangers of every disposition. Every mainstream game has a mute function and a report function, and knowing where they are before you need them is part of Step 4. If online abuse goes beyond what the game's own tools can handle, the eSafety Commissioner is the Australian body that accepts reports about serious online abuse and publishes guidance for adults and families.

Six words you will meet

Client: The program you install on your own computer. It draws the game and talks to the publisher's servers.
Server: The publisher's computer that holds the authoritative version of what is happening. Your client asks it for the truth many times a second.
Launcher: A small program that logs you in, downloads updates and then starts the client. Many games put the account screen here rather than in the game itself.
Patch: An update. Online games patch often, sometimes weekly, and you usually cannot play until the patch has downloaded.
Tutorial: A guided first session that teaches the controls. It is normally short, cannot be lost, and is the sensible first thing to do.
Microtransaction: A small purchase made inside the game rather than at a shop, typically between one and twenty dollars.

Starting with a free-to-play game: the trade-offs

In favour

You risk time rather than money while you find out whether you enjoy it.
Large player numbers usually mean short waits for a match, even late at night in Australian time zones.
Ongoing updates mean the game you install is not the finished article; it keeps changing for years.
Uninstalling costs nothing and loses nothing you paid for.

Against

The design has a commercial side, and offers will appear while you play.
Progress can be slow by design, which some people find tedious rather than rewarding.
Downloads are large and patch frequently, which is awkward on a limited connection.
Your account, and anything you spend on it, depends on the publisher continuing to run the service.

The example household at Step 1

Hypothetical example

The invented household from the homepage reads Step 1 at the kitchen table and makes two decisions before touching the laptop. The first is that they will try a game with no up-front cost, because neither adult is sure they will like it. The second is that the household cap on games is 40 AUD for the whole year, agreed out loud, with the teenager present, before any account exists. They write both decisions on the same piece of paper they will use for Step 2. No product is being judged here, and no outcome is being claimed — this is simply the shape of a sensible first conversation.

The rights you keep as an Australian buyer

Spending nothing does not put you outside consumer law, and spending something certainly does not. Digital products and services sold to consumers in Australia come with consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law, and the ACCC publishes plain-English explanations of what those guarantees cover and how to complain. Misleading or deceptive conduct by a business is prohibited under the same law. If a game's own store page says something that turns out not to be true, that is the body to read first.

Two other places are worth a bookmark now rather than later. Scamwatch collects reports of scams and publishes warnings; fake "free currency" sites and account-stealing offers are a known pattern around popular games, and the general rule is that nobody legitimate needs your game password. The OAIC handles privacy complaints under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), which is relevant when you start reading privacy notices in Step 3.

Where the game used in this course sits

This course uses one game as its running example, so that the steps have something specific to point at. The description we were given by the affiliate network is that War Thunder is an online game with a widely recognised brand, and that a commission is paid when a reader registers, confirms their email address and logs in. It is offered for desktop computers — Windows, macOS and Linux — and not for phones or tablets. Beyond that, the vendor's description given to us does not state what is purchasable inside the game, how large the download is, or what its Australian classification is, so this course does not tell you. The store page and the Classification Board's database are where those answers live.

Visit the War Thunder website

Paid link: a commission is paid to Solid Facet by the affiliate network that operates the link if you register through it. Your cost is the same, and this step would read identically without the link.

Step 1 checklist

Work through these before Step 2

Write down, in one sentence, which of the three arrangements the game you are considering uses: free to install, bought once, or subscription.
Find the game's own store or product page and note which of the five revenue sources it names — cosmetics, convenience, content packs, membership, advertising.
Note whether the store page mentions purchasable randomised items, and if it does, look the title up at the Australian Classification Board before going further.
Decide whether you are happy with a slow route that costs time, and write that decision down.
Write down the annual amount you are prepared to spend on this game. Nothing is a valid answer.
Check whether the game is offered for the kind of computer you own, and not only for consoles or phones.
Bookmark the ACCC and Scamwatch pages, so that a complaint or a suspicious offer has somewhere to go later.

Before you move on

You should now be able to say where the money in a free game comes from, name what usually sits behind a payment, and point to the Australian bodies that handle classifications, scams, privacy and consumer complaints. You should have a written spending figure, even if it is zero. Step 2 turns to your own computer, which is the only part of this that can stop you cold.