Step 1 of 5

What you are actually signing up for

Before anything is installed, it is worth separating three things that are usually described with the same word. Most of the confusion people have in their first week with an online PC game comes from not having separated them.

Three things, one word

When somebody says they have "got the game", they could mean any of three separate things, and the three are acquired at different moments, from different places, and with different consequences.

The first is the game itself: the simulation running on a publisher's servers, along with the rules, the content and the other people playing it. You never hold this. It exists only while the publisher keeps it running, which is the single most important difference between an online game and a boxed one. If the publisher switches the servers off, the game ends, whatever is installed on your machine.

The second is the client, sometimes called the launcher or the installer. This is the software that is downloaded onto your own computer. It draws the pictures, takes your keyboard and mouse input, and talks to the publisher's servers. A client is typically several gigabytes, and for a large online game it is often tens of gigabytes once fully updated. It is ordinary desktop software: it occupies disk space, it updates itself, and it can be uninstalled from the usual place in Windows or macOS.

The third is the account. This is the record on the publisher's side that says who you are — in practice, an email address, a password, and whatever has been earned or bought. The account is the part that persists. Reinstall the client on a different computer, sign in with the same account, and everything attached to the account comes back. Lose access to the email address the account was created with, and recovering it can be slow or impossible.

Keeping these apart makes several later questions simple. "Can I move to a new computer?" is a question about the client, and the answer is almost always yes. "Will I lose my progress?" is a question about the account, and the answer depends entirely on whether you can still sign in. "Is it still playable in five years?" is a question about the game, and nobody can answer it, including the publisher.

What "single opt-in" means

You will see the phrase single opt-in on sign-up pages and in the material that advertising networks publish about them. It describes how many times you confirm that you want something.

Single opt-in means one action is enough. You type an email address into a form, press a button, and the account exists from that moment. Double opt-in means two: you type the address, and then you must open a message sent to that address and follow a link in it before the account is considered confirmed. Double opt-in proves the address belongs to you; single opt-in does not.

Two practical consequences follow. First, with single opt-in a typing mistake in the email field creates an account tied to an address you cannot read, which is a nuisance to unwind. Type the address slowly, and read it back before you press the button. Second, single opt-in sometimes means the account exists but is not yet activated — the publisher may still require a confirmation step before certain things work. "Create an account" and "activate an account" can be two separate events, and advertising material that mentions both is describing exactly that sequence.

Neither arrangement is sinister. They are just different, and knowing which one you are in tells you whether to go and check your inbox next.

What a sign-up page is asking you for

A sign-up form for an online game typically asks for four things, and it is worth knowing what each is for before you decide how to answer.

An email address. This is the account's name and its recovery path. Treat it as the important field. An address you check regularly and still control in five years is better than a new one created for the purpose and then forgotten.

A password. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes general guidance on passwords and passphrases that applies here as it does anywhere else: long, unique to this one account, and stored in a password manager rather than in your head or on paper beside the screen. A game account that shares a password with your email account turns one breach into two.

A date of birth. This is usually there to apply age-based restrictions, and sometimes to decide what the publisher may show or sell you. Entering a false one to get around a restriction can breach the terms you are agreeing to in the same moment.

A country. This can affect which servers you are placed on, which payment methods appear, and which consumer rules the publisher applies to you. Answer it honestly for the country you actually live in.

Alongside those, most forms carry one or more tick boxes: the terms of service, sometimes a privacy notice, and usually a marketing consent. The marketing box is the only one of the three that is genuinely optional, and leaving it unticked costs you nothing but a newsletter. Step 3 deals with what the other two commit you to.

What "free to play" usually means

Across this category, games that cost nothing to download generally earn money in one of a few ways, and it helps to recognise them before you meet them rather than after.

Some sell cosmetic items — things that change how something looks without changing how it performs. Some sell time: a paid subscription that makes progress faster. Some sell content, such as additional vehicles, characters or campaigns. Some sell randomised items, where you buy a container and the contents are decided by chance. And many sell an in-game currency first, so that the real-money price and the in-game price are two steps apart.

None of those is unusual and none is automatically a problem. The randomised kind deserves particular care, because it is the one where the amount you spend and the thing you receive are not fixed to each other, and because it is the kind that raises questions for households with children. Step 5 returns to it, and the Australian Classification Board is the right place to check how a specific game is classified in Australia and whether its classification carries a consumer advice line about in-game purchases.

What "free to play" does not mean is that the publisher has no commercial interest in you. It means the payment comes later, by choice, instead of at the start.

The household we follow

Through this course we return to one hypothetical household, invented to make the advice concrete. Two adults share a five-year-old desktop computer in the living room of a regional town. The connection is adequate before dinner and noticeably slower afterwards. Neither has installed a game on a computer before; one has played on a console years ago.

At this step, their useful work is entirely on paper. They write down which of the three things above they are each thinking of when they say "the game". They agree that the account will be created on an email address they both can reach, rather than on one person's work address. And they note that the computer is five years old, which is a Step 2 question they have now at least asked.

The product this course uses as its example

This course names one product, repeatedly, as its worked example of a sign-up: World of Warships, an online game published for Windows and Mac desktops. The material supplied by the affiliate network that promotes it describes the path a new player takes as a single opt-in, followed by downloading the client, then creating and activating an account — which is precisely the sequence this step has just taken apart.

Nothing further about that game is asserted here. Its system requirements, its pricing, what it contains and how it handles accounts are all questions for the vendor's own website, and this course sends you there rather than paraphrasing. The vendor does not state, in anything supplied to this publisher, which in-game purchases exist or what they cost, so this course does not say.

Visit the World of Warships websitePaid affiliate link. If you create and activate an account after following it, this site is paid a commission by the network that operates the link. The price you pay is unaffected, and the commission did not decide what this page says. Full disclosure.

Words you will meet again

Client

The software installed on your own computer that connects to the publisher's servers.

Launcher

A small program that checks for updates and then starts the client. Often the thing you actually click.

Patch

An update to the client, downloaded automatically. Large online games patch often, sometimes weekly.

Server

The publisher's computer that runs the game. Many games have several, grouped by region.

Latency

The delay between your input and the server's response, measured in milliseconds. Distance to the server is part of it.

Client-side settings

Options stored on your computer rather than on the account, such as graphics quality and key bindings.