Soft Margin · Course file SM-FTP-5
A five-step course on starting your first free-to-play PC game
This course is written for adults in Australia who have heard that a game is free to play, are curious, and would like to understand what that actually involves before they decide anything. Each step takes about eight to ten minutes to read, so the whole course is roughly three-quarters of an hour; you can read one step a night and lose nothing.
Paid links — read this first
Soft Margin is paid a commission when somebody creates an account and confirms their email address after following one of our links to Crossout. The reader pays the same either way, and the commission does not decide what the five steps say, which checks we recommend, or whether a product is mentioned at all. Our Affiliate Disclosure sets out the arrangement in full, including what does decide the content.
The five steps, in order
- S-01What free-to-play means on a PC
The words you will meet, and where the money in a free game comes from.
- S-02Working out whether your computer can run it
Finding your own specifications and reading a requirements table without guessing.
- S-03Accounts, email confirmation and signing in
Setting up the account safely and telling a real confirmation email from a fake one.
- S-04Classification, spending and randomised items
Age classification, in-game purchases in Australian dollars, and household limits.
- S-05First sessions and keeping it in proportion
Settings, other players, updates, and deciding whether to keep the game.
Who this course is for, and who it is not for
It is for someone who has not installed a game on a desktop computer before, or has not done it for a long time. Perhaps a friend mentioned a game, or a household member asked for one, and the word "free" raised a sensible question: free in what sense, and paid for by whom.
It is not for people who already build their own computers, compare frame rates or follow game releases closely. Those readers know all of this. It is also not an advice service. We do not know your household, your budget or your internet plan, and nothing here is a recommendation that you should install any particular game.
You never have to finish the course. Reading one step and stopping is a reasonable outcome, and so is reading all five and deciding that this kind of game is not for you.
What you will be able to do after each step
| After S-01 | Explain in one sentence how a free game pays for itself, and name the three things it asks of you. |
|---|---|
| After S-02 | Read your own computer's specifications and compare them with a published requirements table. |
| After S-03 | Create an account with a passphrase you have not reused, and check that a confirmation email is genuine. |
| After S-04 | Find a title's Australian classification and set a spending limit before anyone is tempted. |
| After S-05 | Set up the first session sensibly and decide, calmly, whether to keep the game installed. |
The one checklist to do before anything else
If you read nothing else on this site, work through the five lines below. They take about ten minutes and they prevent most of the ordinary frustrations: a download that will not run, an account tied to an address nobody checks, or a card saved somewhere it should not be.
Checklist S-00 · Before anything else
- Write down which operating system your computer runs, and whether it is a desktop or a laptop.
- Decide which email address will own any game account, and confirm you can actually open that inbox.
- Check how much free space is on the drive you would install to.
- Check whether your internet connection is metered or has a data cap this month.
- Agree, out loud with anyone else in the household, what the spending limit is — including zero.
A worked example that runs through the course
A hypothetical household appears in several steps so that the abstract parts have something to hold on to. It is an invented example, not a real family and not a reader account: two adults sharing one ageing desktop computer in a spare room, with a monthly internet plan they have never looked at closely, and a teenager who has asked about a vehicle-combat game a friend plays.
We follow their decisions, not their results. The example never says that a game was good or bad, fast or slow, worth it or not. It only shows the order in which the questions arrive: can the machine run it, whose email address owns the account, what is the classification, and who is allowed to spend what.
What you can do without spending anything
Every practical task in this course is free. Reading your own system specifications costs nothing and needs no extra software. Making a separate email address for game accounts costs nothing. Looking up a title in the national classification database costs nothing. Setting a spending limit costs nothing, by definition.
The games discussed in the course are described by their publishers as free to play, which means the download and the account are free and money appears later, inside the game, as optional purchases. Step 1 takes that apart properly, and Step 4 deals with what those purchases look like in Australian dollars.
Where Crossout appears in the course, and why
Crossout is used as the worked example of a free-to-play title because the course needs one concrete case and because our commercial arrangement is with that title, which we would rather say plainly than hide. Its publisher describes it as a free-to-play massively multiplayer online game set in post-apocalyptic realities, built around vehicles that players construct and modify themselves — shape, armour, armament, support systems and accessories. The publisher states that it runs on desktop Windows and Linux; it is not offered for macOS.
We describe the game only in those terms, because those are the only terms its publisher gives us. Where you might expect a judgement — is it any good, is it fast, is it fair — we have nothing to offer, and we say so rather than invent one. Soft Margin is not connected with the game's publisher in any way other than the paid link.
Visit the Crossout website Paid link — Soft Margin is paid a commission if you create an account and confirm your email address after following it. The course works perfectly well if you never do. How this works.
Australian organisations worth knowing
- Australian Classification Board — the body that classifies films, computer games and certain publications for Australia, with a searchable database of decisions.
- Australian Cyber Security Centre — the Australian Government's source of general advice on passphrases, multi-factor authentication and keeping software updated.
- Scamwatch — run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, it collects reports and publishes descriptions of current approaches used by scammers.
- eSafety Commissioner — Australia's regulator for online safety, with material on gaming, reporting and family settings.
- Office of the Australian Information Commissioner — the national privacy regulator, which publishes the Australian Privacy Principles.
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission — the regulator for consumer law, including guidance on consumer guarantees for digital products.
How this course is written and kept current
The course is written by the editorial team at Drastavela Room s.r.o. There are no individual authors, because no individual's opinion is being sold here; the steps are a sequence of checks, not a point of view. Anything we say about a specific game comes from what its publisher states, and anything we say about Australian rules links to the Australian body responsible for them. Where neither is available, we leave the question open rather than fill it in. The About page sets out the method in more detail, including the commercial relationship behind the example title.
Short questions and answers
Do I need to create an account on this site?
No. Soft Margin has no accounts, no sign-up and no forms. The checklists are printed lists; they do not remember which boxes you have ticked, because nothing is stored in your browser.
Does the course expire or have to be completed in order?
The steps are written to be read in order, because each one assumes the vocabulary of the one before it. Nothing expires and nothing is tracked, so reading Step 4 on its own is allowed; it will simply refer to terms defined earlier.
Is Crossout available for a Mac?
Its publisher lists desktop Windows and Linux only, and states that macOS is not supported. If the only computer in the house is a Mac, Step 2 explains what that rules out and what it does not.
Will following the affiliate link cost me more?
No. The price a reader pays is unchanged, and in this case the publisher describes the game and the account as free to play. The commission is paid by the advertiser for a registration and a confirmed email address, not by you.
Start with Step 1 · What free-to-play means on a PC