Step 5 — Living with it: updates, playtime, money and leaving

Everything up to here was about arriving. This step is about the part that lasts: the months after setup, when the arrangement either settles into the household or quietly stops matching it. Most of the work is small and periodic, and all of it is easier if it was set up in Step 2 as a review rather than invented later as a reaction.

What changes after the first fortnight

Three things reliably shift, and knowing to expect them stops each from feeling like a betrayal.

The first is social gravity. In the opening days the appeal is the game. After a fortnight, for many players, the appeal is the other people in it — friends from school, or people met inside it. This changes what stopping costs. Ending a solitary session is a minor inconvenience; ending one where three friends are waiting is a social event. If your time rules were written for the first version, they will need adjusting for the second, and that is not the player being difficult.

The second is the arrival of the spending moment. Free-to-play games generally do not ask for money on day one. The ask arrives later, usually attached to something the player now cares about. Your household's money answer from Step 2 exists precisely for this day.

The third is habituation. The game stops being an event and becomes part of the week, which is usually fine and occasionally the point at which it should be reviewed rather than left to run.

Updates and changing terms

Online games change under you. New areas, new systems and new things to buy arrive continuously, and the terms of service and privacy policy are revised from time to time as well.

Two habits cover this. Read the email when a company says its terms are changing, rather than deleting it — these are usually brief summaries with a link, and the summary is enough. And every few months, re-do the settings pass from Step 4, because an update can introduce a new setting whose default is not the one you would choose.

If an update introduces a kind of purchase your household has not discussed, particularly a randomised one, treat that as a trigger for a conversation and check the current Australian position with the Australian Classification Board rather than with a forum.

The money review

Once a quarter, look at the actual money rather than the remembered money. Open the card or bank statement and search it for the merchant name you noted in Step 3. Open the store account's purchase history, which every major store keeps, and look at the list.

You are checking three things: whether anything was bought that nobody mentioned, whether a subscription is renewing that someone meant to cancel, and whether the total over three months is what everybody assumed.

If you find a purchase a child made on an adult's account, raise it with the vendor and with the payment provider promptly. Consumer guarantees and the rules on unauthorised transactions are explained by the ACCC, and a term in a vendor's agreement does not by itself decide the outcome. Be aware that the practical chance of a remedy drops the longer it is left, which is an argument for a quarterly look rather than an annual one.

If you find nothing, say so out loud to the player. A review that only ever produces consequences becomes an interrogation; one that mostly produces "all good, see you in three months" stays survivable.

Renegotiating playtime without starting again

The half page from Step 2 was a first draft written by people who had not yet seen the game. It is meant to be revised.

A useful way to revise it is to change one variable at a time and to say which one you are changing. Moving the weeknight end time later is a different decision from allowing weekday play at all, and lumping them together guarantees an argument about the wrong thing. Write the revised half page and date it, so there is a record of what was agreed and when, which matters more than it sounds like it should.

It is also fair to tighten rather than only loosen, provided the reason is stated and is about the household rather than about the player's character. "Not on nights before exams" is a reason. "Because you have been on it too much" is an accusation, and it will be argued with rather than kept.

When something goes wrong, and who to tell

Three categories of problem have three different addresses, and knowing which is which saves a great deal of effort.

Another player behaving badly is first a matter for the game's own reporting and blocking tools, which you found in Step 2. For serious online harms, including cyberbullying of a child and image-based abuse, the eSafety Commissioner operates reporting schemes and publishes what it can act on.

An attempt to take the account or extract money by deception is a scam. Scamwatch is where to report it, and the Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes recovery guidance for compromised accounts. If a password was reused anywhere else, change it there too, immediately.

A dispute about money or about what was promised is a consumer matter. Start with the vendor in writing, keep the correspondence, and if that fails, the ACCC explains the next steps and points to your state or territory fair trading body.

A privacy complaint — for instance, if a company refuses to delete a child's information when asked — goes to the vendor first and then to the OAIC.

A sensible timeline

Holidays, travel and other people's houses

An online game needs a connection, so school holidays away from home are where arrangements break. Decide in advance whether the game travels, and say so before packing rather than in the car.

Mobile data is the other thing to settle. A game played on a home connection costs nothing extra; the same game on a phone plan may not, and updates in particular can be large. Check the plan before a long trip.

At other people's houses, your household's settings do not apply, because the device and the store account are different. This is worth saying once, calmly, as a fact about how devices work rather than as a rule being imposed on somebody else's home.

Closing an account cleanly

Deciding against a game is a legitimate outcome of this course, and leaving properly takes twenty minutes.

Cancel any subscription first, through the place it was bought — for a store subscription that is the store account, not the game. Confirm the cancellation in writing or by screenshot, and note the date the current period ends. Then ask the vendor to close or delete the account and, where a child's information is involved, to delete the personal information it holds, citing their own privacy policy. Then remove the game from the device, which is the last step and not the first: uninstalling an application does not cancel a subscription or close an account, and a surprising number of people believe it does.

Finally, keep the registered mailbox working for a few months. Closing it immediately removes your ability to receive any confirmation, refund notice or breach notification about an account that may still exist somewhere.

The product named as this course's example is one option among many in its category, and nothing here suggests the course should end with an account existing. If the honest conclusion from your half page is no, that is the course working.

Visit the Star Stable Online website

The worked example, at this step

Before you finish

Checklist for Step 5