Even Format

Step 5 of 5

Step 5 — Spending, randomised items and staying in control

The last step is the one with money in it. A game with no purchase price still has a shop, and the shop is designed by people who are good at their work. This step describes how it is built, what Australian law has to say, and how to set a ceiling that holds.

Why prices are shown in coins

Almost every game in this category sells a premium currency: you buy coins, crystals or tokens with real money, then spend them inside the game. The arrangement does three things at once, and all three work against careful decisions.

It separates the moment of paying from the moment of choosing, so the second feels free. It makes comparison awkward, because an item costs 1,750 coins and coins are sold in packs of 1,000 and 2,500. And the pack sizes rarely match the prices, so a purchase leaves a remainder in the account that is only useful for another purchase.

The counter-move is simple and worth doing once. Work out what one coin costs in Australian dollars at each pack size, write the figure down, and convert every price you see back into dollars before deciding. A purchase that still looks reasonable in dollars is a purchase you have actually chosen.

The season pass and the fear of missing out

A battle pass, or season pass, is a list of rewards released over a season of a month or two. There is normally a free track and a paid track, and rewards you do not reach before the season ends are usually gone.

The deadline is the mechanism. It converts “would I like this?” into “will I lose this?”, and it also quietly sets an hours-per-week expectation, because the paid track is designed to be finished by someone who plays regularly. Buying a pass can be good value for a person who was going to play that much anyway. For a person who was not, it buys an obligation.

A pass may suit you if

  • You already play this game most weeks and expect to keep going.
  • You have looked at the whole reward list and want several items on it.
  • You converted the price into dollars and it still looks fine.

A pass probably does not suit you if

  • You are in your first fortnight and still deciding about the game.
  • The appeal is mostly that the season ends soon.
  • Finishing it would need more hours a week than you want to give.

Randomised items, in plain terms

A loot box is any item whose contents are decided by chance when it is opened: crates, cases, packs, containers. You know the pool; you do not know the result. They may be bought with money, bought with premium currency, or earned by playing — and in many games all three at once, which blurs the line between the parts of the game that cost nothing and the parts that do.

Two features are worth checking in any game that sells them. First, whether the odds are published, and in what form. Second, whether the items inside can also be bought directly; if they can, you can always choose the certain purchase over the uncertain one.

The honest general observation about randomised rewards is that uncertain outcomes hold attention more firmly than certain ones. That is not a claim about any particular game, and this course cites no study for it; treat it as a reason to decide before you open rather than while you are opening.

Where Australian rules come in

Two bodies matter here, and the accurate thing to say about each is what it does.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission administers the Australian Consumer Law, which prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct in trade and gives consumers guarantees that cannot be contracted away. Those guarantees apply to goods and services supplied to consumers in Australia, digital products included; whether and how they apply to a specific purchase from a specific overseas publisher is a question for the ACCC's own guidance rather than for this page.

The Australian Classification Board classifies games and publishes consumer advice, and that advice is where in-game purchasing and simulated gambling elements are noted when they are present. Reading the advice line for a title is the way to find out what the Board recorded about it.

This course states no legal threshold, no age rule and no verdict about whether any particular mechanic is gambling. Those are matters for the bodies above, whose material is public and current in a way that a page like this cannot be.

Randomised purchases and young players

If the person playing is under 18, treat purchasable randomised items as a decision for an adult rather than a setting to be left at its default. The practical approach is to remove the ability to buy on impulse, which means no saved card, a payment method that has to be topped up deliberately, and a rule that purchases are discussed before they are made.

Nothing here presents randomised purchasing as suitable entertainment for a minor. It is a commercial mechanism with real money attached, and a household that treats it as one has the easier conversation.

Setting a ceiling that holds

A ceiling, in five moves

  1. Remove the saved card. Check the game, the launcher and the store account, since a card can be saved in all three. A purchase that takes two minutes to arrange is a purchase you get to reconsider.
  2. Use a separate payment method with a known balance. A prepaid card or a gift card for the platform caps the loss at whatever is on it, with no reference to your bank account.
  3. Check what your bank offers. Many Australian banks and card providers let you lock a card, set a limit, or block categories from an app. These controls are free and they apply to every game on the computer.
  4. Write the amount and the period down. Not “not too much” but a number of dollars over a stated number of weeks, agreed with everyone it applies to.
  5. Read the statement once a month. Small purchases are easy to forget and the statement is the only place they are all listed together. Check it against the agreed figure, without accusation; the point is information.

If something goes wrong with a purchase

Start with the publisher's own refund process; most have one, usually in the account area of their website, and it is the fastest route. Keep the receipt or confirmation email for anything you buy.

If a purchase was made without authorisation — a child using a saved card, for example — contact the publisher and your card provider promptly, because both have time limits and both will want the transaction details. If you believe a seller has misled you, the ACCC explains what the Australian Consumer Law requires of sellers and how to make a complaint. If the problem began with a message or a site pretending to be the game, report it to Scamwatch as well.

Reading your own habits

Three questions, asked honestly every month or so, cover most of what matters. Did I spend more than the figure I wrote down? Did I play longer than I meant to, more than occasionally? Am I playing because I want to, or because something in the game ends soon?

None of those questions has a correct answer and none is a diagnosis. They are there because the design of these games makes drift easy, and because noticing drift early is simpler than reversing it late. If gambling-like spending is causing harm, Australian help services exist and a general practitioner is a reasonable first conversation; that is outside what a course like this can address.

The example household at this step

Hypothetical example

The invented household removes the saved card from the launcher, agrees a figure per school term rather than per week, and decides that anything bought is discussed first. They work out the dollar value of the game's coins once and write it on a note beside the computer. They check the bank statement at the end of the first month and find the total matches what they agreed. That is the end of the course for them, and nothing was bought to reach it.

What the vendor of Enlisted states

The material this course works from describes Enlisted as a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter set in Second World War battles, available on desktop computers, with registration completed by confirming an email address and logging in. It does not state what the game sells, what anything costs, or whether randomised items are among them. This course therefore does not state those things either; its own site is where to look, with the four doors from Step 1 and the questions from this step in hand.

Visit the Enlisted website — opens in a new tab.

Paid affiliate link: a commission is paid to LOKGROUP s.r.o. if you register through it. The price you pay is unchanged, and the advice above is the same advice we would give about any game in this category.

Finishing the course

Before you move on

That is the whole course. You can separate a game from its shop, look up a classification and read its consumer advice, check a computer against published requirements, complete a registration without giving away more than it needs, set communication so strangers reach you on your terms, and put a ceiling on spending that someone else cannot quietly raise. The checklists page gathers all five lists in one place, and it prints cleanly if you would rather work on paper.

Checklist for Step 5

The last list