Step 3 of 5
Reading a vendor's terms, costs and age rules without reading all of them
Nobody reads forty pages of terms, and nobody needs to. Six clauses carry almost everything a household cares about, and this step shows you how to find them and what a clear answer looks like.
Where the real information lives
A game's front page is an advertisement and is allowed to be. The documents that bind you are linked from the bottom of that page, usually under names like terms of service, terms of use, end user licence agreement, privacy policy, and sometimes a separate page about subscriptions, refunds or parents.
Three practical facts about those documents. They are the vendor's own statements, so they are the best available source on that vendor — better than any summary, including this course. They change, usually with a date at the top, so the version you read is the version on that date. And they are written to be complete rather than clear, which is why it pays to search inside them instead of reading from the start.
On a computer, the keyboard shortcut for searching within a page is Control-F, or Command-F on a Mac. On a phone or tablet, the browser's menu usually offers "Find in page". That single habit turns a forty-page document into a five-minute job.
A procedure for reading a vendor's pages
Do this in order, with your Step 2 page beside you. It applies to any product in the category, not to one particular interface.
- Open the vendor's own website directly, by typing the address or searching for the company name, rather than following a link from a forum or a video description.
- Scroll to the bottom of the home page and list the legal and support links you can see. If there is a page for parents or for safety, add it.
- Open the terms document and note the date at the top. If there is no date, write "undated" on your page; it tells you something about how the vendor treats the document.
- Search the terms for the words subscription, renew, cancel, refund, age, parent, suspend and terminate. Read the sentences around each hit, not the whole section.
- Open the privacy page and search for child, age, delete and third part, which catches both "third party" and "third parties".
- Open the pricing or store page and write down what is actually sold: one-off purchases, a recurring membership, in-game currency, randomised items, or a mixture.
- Write the six answers from the next section on your Step 2 page. If a question has no answer anywhere on the site, write "not stated". That is a finding, not a failure.
- Stop. Do not create an account yet; that is Step 4, and it goes better when the reading is finished first.
The six clauses that matter
| Question | A clear answer looks like |
|---|---|
| Who may hold an account? | A stated minimum age, and a statement about whether a parent or guardian must consent or hold the account for a younger player. |
| What recurs, and when? | A named billing period, a renewal that happens automatically or does not, and the date or trigger for each charge. |
| How do I cancel? | A described method — in the account settings, by email, through an app store — and what happens to access for the rest of the paid period. |
| What is the refund position? | The vendor's own policy, stated separately from your legal rights, which it cannot remove. |
| What happens to purchased items? | A statement about whether items are a licence to use rather than property, and what happens to them if the account closes or the service ends. |
| What can the vendor change? | A clause about changing the service or the terms, and whether you are told in advance. |
Two of these answers are commonly vague even on well-run sites: what happens to purchased items, and how much notice you get before a change. If both are vague, that is worth weighing — not as evidence of bad faith, but as information about how much of your yearly figure you want to commit at once.
Reading the cost page honestly
Convert everything into one number you can compare with the figure you wrote in Step 2. A monthly membership becomes a yearly figure by multiplying by twelve, and by thirteen if you expect to forget one cancellation. A currency pack becomes meaningful only when you can see what things cost inside the game, which is often not visible until after sign-up; if so, write "unknown until inside" rather than guessing.
Watch for prices shown in a currency that is not Australian dollars. Your card issuer will convert at its own rate and may add a fee, so a foreign price is an approximate Australian price. If a vendor shows prices in AUD, the figure is easier to plan with.
Finally, write down what the purchase actually buys: access for a period, a permanent addition, or a consumable that is used up. These three behave very differently when someone loses interest in four months.
Age statements and what they do not cover
A vendor's stated minimum age is a contractual rule about accounts. It is not a classification, and it is not advice about whether the game suits a particular child. The national classification of computer games made available in Australia is published by the Australian Classification Board, and checking a specific title there is the right move before relying on any age figure.
Separate from both, the question of whether a child is ready for a shared world with other people in it is a judgement about that child. The eSafety Commissioner publishes guidance for parents and carers on exactly that question, including how to talk about contact from strangers and how to report serious harm.
Where a vendor states nothing about age, record "not stated". Do not substitute a number from a review site, a video or this course.
Your position under Australian law
Some protections apply regardless of what a vendor's terms say. Goods and services supplied to consumers in Australia come with consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law, and a business cannot contract out of them; the ACCC publishes what those guarantees cover and how to complain. Misleading or deceptive conduct in trade is also prohibited under that law, which is why a vendor's claims about what a product includes are worth saving a copy of.
Two further pointers. If an offer arrives by email or message claiming to be from a game company and asking for a login or a payment, Scamwatch is the place to check and to report it. And if you have a concern about how an organisation has handled personal information, the OAIC explains the complaint path.
This course is general information rather than legal advice, and our terms say so plainly.
A product you can practise on
It helps to do the procedure above on a real site rather than an imaginary one. Star Stable Online is an online horse-riding game, and its own website is a reasonable place to practise reading the footer links, finding the terms, and looking for the six answers.
What we can tell you about it comes only from the affiliate programme material we work from: the programme pays Wideshift a commission for a sign-up, for a first play session and for a sale. The material does not state the price, the device requirements, the contents of the game or an age position, so we do not state them either — those are exactly the things you would go and read for yourself.
Visit the Star Stable Online website Paid affiliate link. If you sign up after following it, Wideshift receives a commission at no extra cost to you; the same site is reachable by searching for its name.
The example household in Step 3
The invented household from Steps 1 and 2 sits down with their six-line page and spends twenty minutes on a vendor's site. They find the terms, note the date, and search for the eight words. The subscription clause tells them the membership renews by itself and is cancelled in the account settings, with access continuing to the end of the paid period.
The cost page gives a monthly figure, which they multiply out and compare with their yearly number. It fits, but only if they pay for the months they intend to use rather than leaving it running. Two answers come back as "not stated": what happens to purchased items if the service ends, and how much notice is given before a change to the terms. They write both down and decide to pay for a shorter period rather than a longer one.
They have still not created an account. The family is hypothetical, and nothing here describes any real outcome with any product.
Before you move on
Step 3 is done when your Step 2 page has six answers added to it, each one either a sentence from the vendor or the words "not stated", and when one yearly figure in Australian dollars sits beside the figure you decided before you looked.
If the vendor's figure is higher than yours, the step has done its job. A decision not to proceed is a complete outcome of this course, and the remaining steps will still be here if you change your mind.
Checklist for Step 3
Reading before signing
- I reached the vendor's site directly, not through a forum or video link.
- I listed the legal and support pages linked from the footer.
- I noted the date on the terms document, or wrote "undated".
- I searched the terms for subscription, renew, cancel, refund, age, parent, suspend and terminate.
- I searched the privacy page for child, age, delete and third part.
- I wrote down what is actually sold: access, permanent items, currency, randomised items, or a mixture.
- I have the six answers, with "not stated" written where the vendor says nothing.
- I converted the cost into one yearly figure in Australian dollars, including any currency conversion.
- I checked the title in the Australian Classification Board database.
- I compared the vendor's yearly figure with the figure I set in Step 2.
- I have not created an account yet.