A five-step course on free-to-play PC games, written for people starting from scratch
This course is for readers in Australia who have heard that a game is free, are not sure what that means in practice, and would like to work it out before installing anything. Each of the five steps takes about eight to twelve minutes to read, and each one ends in a checklist you can work through on your own.
Read end to end, the course takes roughly an hour. You can also read one step a week; nothing here is tracked, timed or saved.
How this course is paid for
Calmspan is published by Bounty Gastro s.r.o. and funded by affiliate links. If you follow one of our links to the Crossout website and create an account there, the affiliate network that operates the link may pay us a commission. Nothing you do costs more because you arrived through us, and every one of the five steps can be completed without following any link at all. The longer explanation, including what does and does not decide the content, is on our Affiliate Disclosure page.
The five steps, in order
- Step 1 — What "free to play" means on a PC game
Where the money actually comes from when nobody asks you for a purchase price. - Step 2 — Working out whether your computer qualifies
Operating system, graphics, storage and connection, checked before you download anything. - Step 3 — Accounts, email confirmation and what you agree to
What a sign-up form is really asking for, and how to read the terms attached to it. - Step 4 — Classification, spending and randomised items
Australian classification, in-game currencies, and chance-based items in a household with children. - Step 5 — First sessions, settings and stopping
Settings worth changing on day one, and how to decide a game is not for you.
A sixth page, All checklists, collects every checklist in one place and prints cleanly on white paper.
Who this is for, and who it is not for
This course assumes nothing. It is written for the person who has been told that a game costs nothing to start and wants to understand the arrangement before agreeing to it: a parent whose household has one shared computer, an adult returning to games after fifteen years away, a reader who installs very little software and wants to know what a download actually involves.
It is not written for people who already compare graphics cards for fun. If you know what a dedicated GPU is, what a launcher does and how a battle pass is priced, Step 1 and Step 2 will tell you nothing new, and you would be better served by the publisher's own documentation for whichever game you are considering.
What you will be able to do at the end of each step
After Step 1 you will be able to explain, in your own words, how a game with no purchase price pays for its servers, and to spot the three or four places where money usually enters. After Step 2 you will be able to open your own computer's system information, read the four numbers that matter, and compare them against a published requirements list without guessing.
After Step 3 you will be able to read a sign-up screen as a document rather than an obstacle: which fields are genuinely required, why an email confirmation exists, and what the terms and the privacy notice attached to the form are telling you. After Step 4 you will be able to find a game's Australian classification, work out whether it sells randomised items, and set a household rule about spending that does not depend on anyone's willpower in the moment.
After Step 5 you will be able to run a first session deliberately — sound, graphics, controls and a stopping point chosen before you start — and to uninstall without feeling that you wasted the evening.
The one checklist to do before anything else
If you read nothing else here, do this much first. It takes about ten minutes and it prevents the most common waste of an evening, which is downloading something your computer was never going to run.
- Write down your operating system and its version — Windows 10, Windows 11, or the name and version of your Linux distribution.
- Write down how much free space the drive you install to has right now, in gigabytes.
- Write down the make and model of your graphics hardware, exactly as the system lists it.
- Check whether your household internet plan has a data allowance, and how much of this month's allowance is left.
- Decide, before you look at any game, what you are willing to spend in the first month. Writing "nothing" is a complete answer.
A worked example that runs through the whole course
One hypothetical household appears in every step, so that the advice has somewhere to land. It is an invented example, not a real family, and it is not a report of anyone's results: two adults and a fourteen-year-old in a rented flat, one desktop computer in the living room running Windows 11, a monthly internet plan with a data allowance, and a shared debit card that the teenager does not have.
In Step 1 the household works out what "free" is buying. In Step 2 they read their own machine's specifications. In Step 3 they decide whose email address the account uses and why that matters later. In Step 4 they look up a classification and agree a spending rule. In Step 5 they set a finishing time before the first session starts.
Nothing the household does in this course is presented as an outcome you should expect. It is a way of showing the order of the decisions.
What you can do without spending anything
Every practical task in this course is free. Reading your own system specifications is free. Looking up a title in the Australian Classification Board's register at classification.gov.au is free. Reading a vendor's terms before you agree to them is free, and so is deciding against a game after ten minutes.
Where Crossout appears, and why
One title is named repeatedly in this course: Crossout, described by its vendor as a free-to-play MMO vehicle-combat game set in post-apocalyptic realities, built around vehicles that players construct and modify themselves — shape, armour, armament, support systems and accessories. We use it as the worked example in Step 2 and Step 3 because its published platform requirements are unusually narrow, and narrow requirements make the checking exercise concrete.
Those requirements are worth stating plainly here: the vendor's offer covers desktop computers running Windows or Linux. There is no Mac version in scope, and it is not offered as a console or mobile title. If the only computer in your home is a Mac, Step 2 will tell you to stop before you download anything, and that is a perfectly good result from a checklist.
Our links to Crossout are paid affiliate links. They are marked wherever they appear, and the course is written so that it still makes sense with every one of them removed.
Affiliate link. If you create an account after following it, the affiliate network that operates the link may pay us a commission. Your costs do not change, and this page says the same thing either way.
Official Australian sources used in the steps
- Australian Classification Board — the body that classifies films, computer games and certain publications for sale and distribution in Australia, and publishes the national classification register.
- Australian Cyber Security Centre — the Australian Government's lead agency for cyber security, publishing general guidance for individuals and families.
- Scamwatch — run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, it collects scam reports and publishes descriptions of current scam types.
- eSafety Commissioner — Australia's independent regulator for online safety, with material on games, chat and reporting.
- Office of the Australian Information Commissioner — the national privacy regulator, which administers the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission — the national competition and consumer regulator, responsible for the Australian Consumer Law.
How this course is written and kept current
The course is reviewed at least twice a year. The review date sits in every footer, and the editorial method, including the commercial relationship behind the links, is on the About page.
The five steps were drafted as one sequence rather than as separate pages, which is why each one assumes the step before it and none of them repeats an explanation. Anything stated about Crossout comes from the vendor's own description of the offer; where the vendor does not state something, the course says so instead of filling the gap. Anything stated about Australian rules, bodies or rights links to the body itself.
Short questions
Do I have to finish all five steps?
No. The steps are ordered because each one assumes the one before it, but nothing is tracked and nothing expires. Read Step 1, stop for a week, come back to Step 2 if you want to.
Is there anything to sign up for on this site?
No. There is no account, no newsletter, no form and no field to type into anywhere on Calmspan. The only way to contact us is the email address in the footer.
Will the checklists remember what I have ticked?
No. The boxes are printed shapes, not controls. The site stores nothing in your browser, so the way to keep a record is to print the checklists page or copy the lines into your own notes.
Does the course tell me which game to play?
No. It gives you the questions to ask of any free-to-play title and names one, Crossout, as a worked example of a game whose published requirements are narrow enough to be instructive.