The short version
Look the title up in the Australian Classification Board's database rather than taking anybody's word for it, including ours. Then consider the three things a classification says nothing about: who your child will be talking to, what the game sells and how, and how long a session runs. The eSafety Commissioner publishes practical guidance on the first of those, and the game's own settings usually handle the second and third better than people expect.
Who classifies games in Australia
Computer games distributed in Australia are classified under the national classification scheme, administered by the Australian Classification Board. Its website carries the classification database, the criteria applied to games, and explanations of what each classification and consumer advice line means. That database is the authoritative source for a specific title.
We deliberately do not publish a classification for any game on this site, including the one we have a commercial relationship with. Classifications can change, they can differ between versions of a product, and a stale rating repeated by an affiliate site is exactly the sort of claim that should not be relied on. Search the title on the Board's own site and read what it says there.
How to look one up
Open classification.gov.au, use the classification search, and enter the exact title. The record shows the classification given, the consumer advice attached to it, and the date. The consumer advice line is the useful part — it is a short description of why the classification was given, and it often answers the real question faster than the rating itself.
What a classification cannot tell you
A classification describes the content a publisher submitted. It is a judgement about material, and it is a good one, but three parts of a modern online game sit largely outside it.
Other people. Nobody classifies what a stranger types into a chat box. In a game where matches are filled by matchmaking, your child will be placed with adults, and in a category built around military history some of the surrounding culture is adult in tone. This is the part that most often causes a problem, and it is also the part with the clearest remedies: chat can usually be limited or turned off entirely in the game's settings, and reporting tools exist in every title of this size.
The store. A classification is not a judgement about spending. What a game sells, how often it prompts, and whether any of it involves randomised outcomes are separate questions with separate answers, covered on the costs page.
Time. Session length is a design property, not a content one. These are games built around progression measured in dozens of hours, which is a different proposition from a title you finish in a weekend.
The chat and contact question
The eSafety Commissioner is the Australian government agency for online safety, and it publishes material for parents and carers on gaming specifically — including how to talk about it, what the common risks look like, and how to report serious online abuse when a platform's own report goes nowhere. It is a far better starting point than a forum thread, and it is written for people who do not play games themselves.
Practically, three settings do most of the work: turning off or restricting text and voice chat, restricting who can send friend requests or invitations, and making sure the child knows how to use the in-game report and block functions. Doing this together, once, at setup, is easier than doing it later after something has happened.
Purchases, and randomised items in particular
Where a game sells containers whose contents are decided by chance, that is a meaningful factor in a decision about a younger player, and it should not be waved past. A purchase with an unknown return is a different kind of transaction from buying a named item, and the resemblance to gambling mechanics is the reason it attracts regulatory attention. The Classification Board publishes the criteria it applies to in-game purchases involving elements of chance, and that is the wording to read rather than a summary.
On the practical side: remove saved card details from the account and the platform, require authentication for every purchase in the app store or storefront settings, and use the parental purchase controls the platform provides. If an unauthorised purchase has already happened, the ACCC sets out consumer rights and the complaint path, and the seller is the first place to raise it.
Worth checking before the account is created
- Whose email address is on the account. If it is an adult's, recovery and purchase confirmations stay visible.
- Whether chat is on by default. It usually is.
- Whether a card is saved anywhere in the chain — game account, storefront, platform, browser.
- What the game's own age requirement is, in its terms of service. It is separate from the classification and often stricter.
- Where the computer is. A shared space makes every other item on this list easier to manage.
Time, and why these games do not end
An online vehicle game has no credits sequence. Progression is deliberately long, and each match is a fixed commitment of several minutes to an hour depending on the mode — which matters, because a match cannot be paused. Being told to stop playing halfway through means abandoning teammates and usually losing the rewards for that match, and it is a reliably bad end to an evening.
The workable approach in most households is to agree endings in matches rather than minutes: one more match rather than ten more minutes. It is a small change that removes most of the friction, and it also gives a genuine sense of what the game demands, because the answer to "how long is a match" is a fact about the game rather than a negotiation.
A conversation worth having once
- Nobody in the game needs your real name, your school or your suburb.
- A person who is unusually friendly and asks to move the conversation elsewhere is worth telling an adult about.
- Nothing that requires your password is real, including from someone claiming to work for the game.
- Anything bought with someone else's money gets asked about first, every time.
- Abuse gets reported and blocked in the game, and mentioned at home — not argued with in chat.
- If something goes wrong, saying so early makes it smaller, not bigger.
A note on why this page exists
This site is paid when a reader signs up to the game it covers, which gives us an obvious interest in more people signing up. That is exactly why this page points at the Classification Board and the eSafety Commissioner instead of offering our own verdict on suitability: a site with a commercial stake in the answer is not the right source for it. The affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in full.