A five-step workbook
Starting your first free-to-play PC game, one step at a time
This course is for a reader in Australia who has heard that a big online game costs nothing to install, and wants to know what that actually means before clicking anything. Read end to end it takes about an hour and a half; most people do one step on one evening and come back to the next.
How this site is paid for
Some of the pages here link to the website of World of Warships. Those links are paid affiliate links: if you create and activate an account after following one, the affiliate network that operates the link pays Montej group and compani s.r.o. a commission. The game still costs you the same, which for this title is nothing at the point of sign-up. The commission does not decide what the course says, which products it mentions or what order the steps come in — the full explanation is on our Affiliate Disclosure page. You can finish all five steps and every checklist without following a single one of those links.
The five steps
- What "free to play" actually means — where the money comes from if the download is free, and the four shapes that takes.
- Working out whether your computer can run it — reading a requirements list, finding your own specifications, and testing your connection.
- Reading the account terms before you sign up — age ratings, privacy settings, what you are agreeing to, and what the refund rules say in Australia.
- Installing carefully and surviving the first session — getting the files from the right place, what the first launch does, and the settings to change on day one.
- Spending, randomised items and settling in — setting a budget, understanding loot boxes, and deciding whether to keep playing at all.
All five checklists on one page, formatted to print on a single sheet each.
Who this course is for, and who it is not for
It is written for an adult who has never installed a large online game, or has not done it in a decade and expects the ground to have shifted. You might be curious yourself, or setting a computer up for a teenager and wanting to understand what you are agreeing to on their behalf. The course assumes nothing: every term is explained the first time it appears.
It is not for someone who already plays and wants tactics or patch analysis, and it is not a review. It does not tell you which game is good. It tells you what to look at, in what order, so that if the answer turns out to be "this is not for me", you reach that conclusion in twenty minutes rather than after a 70-gigabyte download.
What you will be able to do when you finish
- After Step 1, read a game's store page and say out loud how it intends to make money from you.
- After Step 2, find your own processor, memory, graphics hardware and free disk space, and compare them against a published requirements table without guessing.
- After Step 3, read an account agreement and a privacy screen well enough to know what is collected and which boxes you want unticked.
- After Step 4, install a large client safely and set the handful of options that matter before you ever press "play".
- After Step 5, hold a spending limit you chose in advance, understand what a randomised purchase is, and have a date in the calendar to ask whether this is still worth your evenings.
The one check to do before anything else
If you do only one thing from this course, do this, because it decides whether the other four steps are worth your time. Find out what operating system your computer runs and how much free space is on its main drive. On Windows that is Settings, then System, then About, and then This PC in File Explorer; on a Mac it is the Apple menu, then About This Mac, then Storage. Write both down on paper.
Large online games are distributed for particular systems and no others. The title used as this course's example is stated by its vendor to run on desktop Windows and macOS machines; Linux is not among them, and phones and tablets are not supported devices. If your only computer runs Linux, or the plan was to play on a tablet, you have just saved yourself an hour — a genuinely useful outcome, and one this course counts as a success.
A worked example you can follow through all five steps
The course carries one hypothetical household through every step: an invented example, not a real family, and nobody in it is quoted saying anything about any product. Picture a flat in suburban Brisbane with one four-year-old laptop, a teenager who has asked for a naval game a friend mentioned, and an adult who pays the internet bill. Their constraints are ordinary — integrated graphics, a shared connection, a budget with no room for a surprise — and each step shows what they look at, what they write down, and what they decide, including the two points where the honest decision is to stop.
What you can do without spending a cent
Everything in this course is free to carry out. The checklists cost nothing, the tools used in Step 2 are already installed on your computer, and the Australian government resources linked throughout are public. Where money appears at all it appears in Step 5, as a decision you make deliberately, in advance, with a figure you chose — and zero is one of the figures.
Where World of Warships appears, and why
A course about starting a free-to-play PC game reads as an abstraction unless it points at a real one, so this one does. World of Warships is used as the worked example throughout: a free-to-play naval title distributed for desktop Windows and macOS computers. What this site states about it comes from one place — the description supplied by the affiliate network that runs its partner programme, which says the programme pays on a single opt-in, a download, and the creation and activation of an account. Anything beyond that is not something we have been told, so the course sends you to the vendor rather than repeating a guess.
Visit the World of Warships website
Paid affiliate link. The publisher of this site is paid a commission by the affiliate network if you create and activate an account after following it; your cost is unchanged.
It is used because it fits the shape of the course, not because of the commission: Steps 1 to 4 would be identical if the example were a different game. Our editorial method sets out how the course was put together and what each step relies on.
Australian organisations worth knowing about
Several steps point to Australian public bodies. Here is what each one is.
- Australian Classification Board — classifies computer games for distribution in Australia and publishes the national classification database.
- eSafety Commissioner — the federal online safety regulator, with guidance for families on games and chat.
- Scamwatch — run by the National Anti-Scam Centre; collects scam reports and describes current ones.
- ACCC — the competition and consumer regulator, which administers the Australian Consumer Law.
- Australian Cyber Security Centre — the Commonwealth cyber security agency, publishing advice on updates, passwords and account protection.
- OAIC — the national privacy regulator, responsible for the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles.
How this course is written and kept current
It is written by the editorial team at Montej group and compani s.r.o. There is no named instructor, because there is no instructor: this is a workbook, not a class, and nobody marks anything. General statements are either linked to the body that publishes them or written as guidance to check against your own situation, and where the vendor's description is silent the course says so. The whole course is reread at least twice a year, and the review date sits in the footer of every page.
Short answers to four common questions
Do I have to do the five steps in order?
You do not have to, but the order is deliberate. Each step assumes you have read the one before it, and the checklists build on each other. If you are short on time, Step 2 on hardware and Step 3 on account terms are the two that save the most trouble later.
Does this course cost anything?
No. There is nothing to buy, nothing to sign up for and no account to create on this site. There is no form anywhere on Idle Format, and no newsletter.
Is this site run by a game publisher?
No. Idle Format is published by Montej group and compani s.r.o., an independent company. It is not an official site for any game, and no game publisher has endorsed, sponsored or reviewed it.
Can I follow the course on a Linux machine or a phone?
You can read it anywhere. The worked examples assume a desktop or laptop running Windows or macOS, because that is what the title discussed in the course supports. Linux is outside what the vendor states it covers.