A five-step course on trying a free-to-play PC game, written for readers in Australia
This course is for an adult in Australia who has heard that a game is free to play on a desktop computer and wants to understand, before anything is installed, what that phrase covers and what it leaves out. Each of the five steps takes about eight to twelve minutes to read, so the whole course is roughly an hour if you read it in one sitting, and it is built to be read in five shorter sittings instead.
Nothing here is a download page and nothing here asks you for an email address. Every step finishes with a checklist you work through on your own screen, at your own pace, and you can finish all five without spending a cent.
Idle Cipher is published by K.R.N. rest s.r.o. and is paid through affiliate links. This page, Step 2 and Step 3 carry a link to the website of Crossout, a free-to-play game used in this course as a worked example. If you follow one of those links, create an account and confirm your email address, the publisher is paid a commission by the affiliate network that operates the link. The game costs you the same either way, the commission has no effect on what the steps say, and the whole course can be completed without following the links at all. The full explanation is on the Affiliate Disclosure page.
The five steps, in order
- Step 1 — What "free to play" means and what it does not: the words on the box, and the four ways a free game can still ask for money.
- Step 2 — Working out whether your computer fits: operating system, graphics, storage and connection, checked before you commit an evening.
- Step 3 — Reading the account and sign-up terms: what an email confirmation actually does, and which parts of a sign-up page are worth slowing down for.
- Step 4 — Your first session and the settings worth changing: a calm order of operations for the first hour, including chat and privacy settings.
- Step 5 — Spending, ratings and household rules: in-game purchases, randomised items, classification ratings and your consumer rights.
If you prefer to work from paper, every checklist in the course is gathered on the All checklists page, which is laid out to print on white.
Who this course is for, and who it is not for
It is written for someone who is comfortable using a Windows or Linux desktop computer for ordinary things — email, banking, streaming — and who has never installed a game client. It assumes you know nothing about the category and defines each term the first time it appears.
It is not for a reader who already plays this kind of game and wants tactics, builds or patch notes; none of that is here. It is not written for a Mac owner, because the example used throughout the course runs on Windows and Linux desktops only, with no macOS version stated by the vendor. It is not advice for a specific household's budget, and it is not legal advice.
What you will be able to do after each step
- After Step 1: say out loud what a free-to-play game sells, and name the four places money normally enters.
- After Step 2: read a system requirement line and compare it to your own machine without guessing.
- After Step 3: open a sign-up page and know which three things to read before typing anything.
- After Step 4: set up a first session so that chat, volume and graphics are where you want them before you start.
- After Step 5: decide a spending rule for your household and know who to contact in Australia if something goes wrong.
The one checklist to do before anything else
Before you read a single system requirement, write down three numbers: how much free space your main drive has, which operating system version you run, and how much data your internet plan allows each month. Those three numbers answer most of the questions people ask after they have already started a download, and finding them takes about four minutes.
The full version of this pre-flight checklist sits at the end of Step 2, with the exact places to look on Windows and on Linux.
A worked example that runs through every step
To keep the course concrete, it follows one hypothetical household: a share house in a regional town with a five-year-old desktop computer, a metered internet plan, and one person who wants to try a vehicle-combat game after work. The household is invented for the purpose of explaining the steps. It is not a real household, nobody in it is named, and it reports no results from any product.
At each step the example shows which decision that household faces and how the step's checklist answers it — which is usually a plain "not yet" or "check this first" rather than a recommendation.
What you can do for free
All five steps, all five checklists and the printable page cost nothing and need no account on this site. There is no sign-up, no progress saving and no certificate, because this is a short course to read rather than an enrolment.
In the category itself, a free-to-play game is one you can install and play without paying for the game itself. Crossout, the example used here, is described by its vendor as free to play; the vendor's own site is the place to confirm what that covers today, and Step 1 explains what the phrase does not cover.
Where Crossout appears in the course, and why
A course about a category needs at least one concrete example, or every sentence becomes abstract. Crossout is the example: a massively multiplayer online game — meaning many players share one persistent world — set in post-apocalyptic surroundings, in which the vehicles are built by the players themselves and can be modified in shape, armour, armament, support systems and cosmetic accessories.
It appears in Step 2, where the course compares a real system requirement to a real machine, and in Step 3, where it looks at what registering and confirming an email address involves. Links to it are paid affiliate links and are labelled as such every time.
Visit the Crossout website Paid affiliate link. K.R.N. rest s.r.o. is paid a commission if you create an account and confirm your email address after following it. Your cost does not change, and the course does not change.
Official Australian help, and what each body does
- Australian Classification Board — classifies films, games and some publications for Australia and publishes the classification and consumer advice for each title.
- eSafety Commissioner — the national online safety regulator; publishes guidance on gaming, chat and reporting, and handles certain online abuse complaints.
- Scamwatch — run by the National Anti-Scam Centre; collects scam reports and describes current scam types.
- ACCC — the competition and consumer regulator, which administers the Australian Consumer Law.
- OAIC — the privacy regulator for the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
- ACSC, at cyber.gov.au — the Australian Signals Directorate's cyber security hub, which publishes general security guidance for individuals.
How this course is written and kept current
The course is written by the K.R.N. rest s.r.o. editorial team. Each step was drafted from three kinds of source: the vendor's own published description of the product used as the example, the published material of the Australian bodies listed above, and general, checkable facts about how desktop computers and game clients work.
Where a fact about the example product is not stated by the vendor, the course says so instead of filling the gap. The pages are reviewed roughly every three months and after any change to the example product's stated platforms or sign-up process, and the review date appears in the footer of every page. More detail is on the About page.
Short FAQ
Do I have to do the steps in order?
No, but Step 2 assumes Step 1 and Step 4 assumes Step 3, so reading them out of order means a little back-tracking.
Will this course work if I use a Mac?
The general parts will. The example product is stated to run on Windows and Linux desktops only, with no macOS version, so Step 2 and Step 4 will not apply to a Mac.
Does the site save my checklist ticks?
No. The checklists are printed boxes with nothing behind them. The site sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser, which is explained on the Cookie Policy page.
Do you sell anything?
No. The only money this site receives is affiliate commission on sign-ups made through the labelled links.
If you read only one step, read Step 1; it is the one that changes how the rest of the category reads.