LOT 04-14

Step 4 of 5

Step 4 — Classification, spending and randomised items

This is the step where a household decides things rather than looks things up. It covers where an Australian classification comes from, how in-game prices are constructed, what randomised items are, and how to set a spending rule that does not rely on willpower.

Who classifies games in Australia

Computer games sold or distributed in Australia are classified under the national classification scheme. The body that does this work, and that publishes the national classification register, is the Australian Classification Board. Its site sets out the classification categories, what the consumer advice lines beside them mean, and which categories carry legal restrictions on sale.

We deliberately do not reproduce those categories or their thresholds here. They are defined in legislation and guidelines that change, and a summary typed into a page like this one is exactly the kind of thing that quietly becomes wrong. Read them from the Board, which maintains them.

What is worth saying in a course is how to use the system rather than what it contains. A classification is a statement about content — violence, language, themes, and whether the game contains in-game purchases or chance-based elements, which modern consumer advice often notes. It is not a statement about whether a game is well made, whether it is fun, or whether it suits your particular household. Treat it as the floor of the decision, not the whole of it.

Finding a particular game's classification

There are three reliable places to look, in this order.

First, the national classification register on the Board's own site, where you can search by title. This is the authoritative source. Second, the store listing you would install from: digital storefronts display the Australian classification marking and the consumer advice to customers in Australia. Third, the vendor's own site, which usually shows the marking somewhere on the game's main page.

If the three disagree, the register is the one to believe, and the disagreement is usually a sign that a listing is out of date. If you cannot find a classification at all for a game that is being distributed here, that absence is itself worth pausing on — and the Board's site explains the scheme well enough for you to work out why it might be missing.

For the title named throughout this course: its classification is not something the vendor's summary we work from states, so we do not state it either. Look it up in the register by name before anyone in your household installs it. That is a two-minute task and it belongs to you, not to us.

How in-game prices are constructed

Almost no online game charges you dollars for an item. It charges you a token, and sells you the token for dollars. Understanding that two-step arrangement removes most of the confusion about what things cost.

The pattern works like this. Real money buys a bundle of in-game currency. Bundles are usually sold in sizes that do not divide evenly into item prices, so there is normally a remainder left in the account. Item prices are expressed in the currency, not in dollars. The result is that the comparison your brain does automatically — "is this worth twelve dollars?" — never happens, because the question in front of you is "is this worth 950 tokens?", and nobody has an instinct for tokens.

The repair is arithmetic, done once. Work out what one unit of the currency costs in Australian dollars from the bundle you would actually buy, write that figure down, and convert item prices back into AUD before deciding. It is not a trick, and the vendor is not hiding anything by doing it this way — but the conversion is work the seller is not going to do for you.

One more general point about money in games. Purchased in-game items usually remain inside the vendor's service — they are a licence to use something in the game, not property you can resell for cash. What happens to them if the account closes or the service ends is in the terms you skimmed in Step 3, and it is worth having read before spending rather than after.

Randomised items, plainly described

A randomised item is a purchase where you pay a known amount for an item drawn by chance from a pool: crates, cases, packs, boxes, whatever the game calls them. You know what you pay. You do not know what you get.

Three things follow from that structure, and they are worth stating in plain language rather than in argument.

One: the cost of obtaining a particular item is not the price on the crate. It is the price of however many crates it takes, which is unknown in advance. A household budget set against the crate price is not a budget against the outcome.

Two: this is the part of games that attracts consumer and regulatory attention in Australia and elsewhere, which is why consumer advice on modern classifications often notes in-game purchases including chance-based items. The Australian Classification Board is the source for how that advice is worded, and the ACCC is the regulator for consumer law questions about how such things are sold and described.

Three: randomised and chance-based purchases are not a suitable activity for children, and no part of this course suggests otherwise. In a household with a young person, the straightforward position is that chance-based purchases are not made at all, and that position is far easier to hold if it is decided before a game is installed rather than in response to a particular screen.

The vendor summary this course works from does not state whether the example title sells randomised items. We are not going to guess. Check the vendor's own store page, and let the answer feed into the rule you write below.

Payment controls that work without arguments

Rules that depend on someone deciding correctly in the moment tend to fail. Rules built into the arrangement tend to hold. Four practical ones, none of which require any special software:

• No card stored on the account. If a purchase requires fetching a card from a wallet in another room, the friction does the work for you.
• One payment method, held by one person. Shared cards in shared households are how unexplained charges happen.
• Operating system and store-level controls. Windows and the major storefronts offer family settings that can require approval for purchases. Set them up before handing over the machine, not after.
• A prepaid amount, if anything is to be spent at all. A fixed sum that cannot be exceeded is a far easier conversation than an open account with a rule attached.

If a charge does appear that nobody authorised, the first stop is the vendor's own support, the second is your bank, and the third — for conduct questions rather than individual disputes — is the ACCC, which explains consumer rights under the Australian Consumer Law. Unexpected charges are not rare and not shameful; they are an ordinary administrative problem with an ordinary path.

Writing the household rule

A good household rule fits in two sentences, names a number, and says what happens at the edge. "Nothing is bought in the first month. After that, up to $20 in a month, cosmetics only, no crates, asked for in advance" is a complete rule. So is "nothing, ever", which is simpler and costs less.

Write it where people can see it. The checklists page has a bordered board for exactly this, meant to be printed and stuck somewhere physical. The point of writing it down is not ceremony — it is that the written version is what everyone refers to later, instead of two different memories of a conversation.

The household in Step 4

The hypothetical household looks up the title in the register, reads the consumer advice beside the classification, and reads one page on the Board's site about what that advice means. They then make three decisions in about ten minutes.

No card is stored on the account. Nothing is bought in the first month, so that the question "do we even still play this?" gets answered before the question "should we buy this?" is asked. And chance-based purchases are out entirely, for the teenager and for the adults, which removes the hardest case from the rule and makes the rest of it easy to apply.

They write the three lines on a card and put it beside the desktop. This household is a hypothetical example used to show the order of decisions; it is not anyone's story and it reports no results.