What you are actually signing up for

People say "I got the game" to describe at least three different events, and a beginner who cannot tell them apart will find every later instruction confusing. This step separates them. By the end you will be able to say, about any desktop game, which of the three you are being asked to do, who ends up holding what, and what you would have to do to undo it.

1.1 Three different things called "getting a game"

The first is a purchase: money changes hands and you receive a licence to use a piece of software. The second is an installation: a file is copied onto your computer and set up so it can run. The third is creating an account: a record is made on a company's servers, under your email address, that identifies you to the game from then on.

These three are independent of one another. You can install something without paying. You can hold an account without having anything installed. You can pay without yet having installed anything. Treating them as one event is where the confusion starts, because the advice that applies to each is different: a purchase raises consumer rights, an installation raises questions about your computer, and an account raises questions about your email address, your password and your personal information.

For most modern desktop games the order is: create an account, install the client, then decide separately whether to spend anything. That is the order this course follows, and it is why spending comes last, in Step 5, rather than first.

1.2 The client: a program that lives on your computer

A client is the part of the game that runs on your own machine. It draws the pictures, plays the sound, and reads your mouse and keyboard. For a game that is played with other people, the client is only half of the arrangement: the other half runs on the company's servers and decides what actually happened. That split is why an online game needs a working internet connection even when you are playing alone, and why it can be unavailable for reasons that have nothing to do with your computer.

The client is ordinary software in the sense that it occupies disk space, uses memory while it runs, and can be removed again. It is unusual in two ways that catch beginners out. It is large — tens of gigabytes is normal for a modern game, where an office program might be a few hundred megabytes. And it changes often, because the company updates it, which is covered below.

Because the client is software you install, the question "can my computer run it?" is a real one with a factual answer, and it is worth answering before you download anything. That is the whole of Step 2.

1.3 The account: a record that lives on the vendor's servers

An account is a row in the company's records. At minimum it holds an identifier for you — usually an email address — a password you choose, and whatever the game has recorded about your progress. If you ever spend money, the account is also what the money is attached to; it is not attached to the computer.

Two consequences follow, and they are the reason Step 5 exists. First, the account survives the computer: you can reinstall, change machines, or have a hard drive fail, and the account is unaffected. Second, the account is the thing that can be lost. Nobody steals a game from your computer; they take the account, by getting hold of the email address and password that open it. An account with money spent on it is worth taking, which is why email security matters more than anything on the computer itself.

"Activating" an account usually means confirming that the email address you gave is yours, by opening a message sent to it and following the link inside. The link is from the company. It is worth knowing that this is the one email you should expect, because any other message claiming to be about your new account deserves suspicion — the Australian Government's Scamwatch service collects information about that kind of approach and how to report it.

1.4 The launcher, and why the game keeps changing

Most desktop games are not started by double-clicking the game itself. You start a smaller program first — a launcher — which checks whether your copy matches the current version on the company's servers, downloads the difference if it does not, and then starts the game. If you have used an app store on a phone, a launcher is that idea applied to a single title.

This is why a game you have not opened for a month will ask for a wait before it starts, and why your storage usage creeps upward over time. It is also why "I installed it once" is not the end of the matter: the client is a living thing that keeps arriving in pieces. For anyone on a metered or limited internet connection, that is a practical cost worth knowing about before the first download rather than after.

Updates are not optional in an online game. The server runs one version; a client that does not match cannot connect. So the honest way to think about a launcher is as a condition of play rather than a feature, and the honest question to ask before you start is whether your connection and your storage can carry it.

1.5 The three shapes a game's payment model takes

Almost every desktop game fits one of three shapes, and knowing which one you are looking at tells you where to expect the money question to appear.

A single purchase. You pay once for a licence, install, and play. Later additions may be sold separately. The money question happens before you install.
A subscription. You pay a recurring amount to keep access. The money question happens before you install and then repeats, which makes cancellation the detail worth finding early.
An account created without an up-front payment, with optional purchases inside the game. The money question happens later, after you are already playing, and it may arrive many times in small amounts. This shape is where Step 5's advice is aimed.

Which shape a given game uses is the vendor's published fact, and the only reliable place to learn it is the vendor's own pages. This course deliberately does not tell you what any particular game costs, because prices and models change and a page written months ago would mislead you. For the game used as this course's worked case, the affiliate programme states that the steps are to download the game and to create and activate an account; it does not state a price, so neither does this course.

The link below is a paid affiliate link: if you create an account after following it, this site is paid a commission, at no additional cost to you.
Visit the World of Warships website

1.6 The household in the example

Worked example — a hypothetical household

This household is invented for the purpose of illustrating the steps. It is not a real household and nothing here is a report of anyone's experience.

Two adults share a unit in Adelaide. There is one desktop computer, about four years old, in the spare room, and a laptop that belongs to one person's employer. One of them has decided to try a naval game that a cousin plays, after a conversation at a birthday lunch where everyone else at the table seemed to know what a "client" was.

At Step 1 their position is this: they have not paid anything, nothing is installed, and no account exists. They have one email address, shared, used for everything from the electricity bill to online shopping. That shared address is the first thing Step 1 flags, because an account created on it is an account both people can open and neither person separately controls — and because a mailbox that already receives a hundred messages a week is a poor place to notice a confirmation email, or to notice a message that is pretending to be one.

1.7 Words used in the rest of the course

Client: The part of the game installed on your own computer.
Launcher: The small program that updates the client and then starts it.
Account: The record held by the company that identifies you, holds your progress, and holds anything you have paid for.
Activation: Confirming that the email address on an account belongs to you, usually by following a link sent to it.
Patch or update: A change to the client downloaded by the launcher so your copy matches the version the servers are running.
System requirements: The list a vendor publishes describing the computer the game is built to run on. The subject of Step 2.
Terms of service: The agreement between you and the company about how the account may be used. The subject of Step 3.

1.8 Before you move on

You should now be able to answer three questions without looking anything up: what a client is and where it sits, what an account is and where it sits, and which of the three payment shapes a game you are looking at uses. If any of those is still fuzzy, the short version is that the client is on your desk, the account is on their servers, and the payment shape tells you whether the money question comes before the install or after it.

Step 2 takes the first of those — the client on your desk — and turns it into five numbers you can write down and compare.

1.9 Step 1 checklist

Nothing here needs a computer except the last item. Tick the boxes on paper if you print this; the page does not remember them.

Sounding — Step 1Checked

I can say in one sentence what a client is and where it is stored.
I can say in one sentence what an account is and who holds it.
I know that money spent is attached to the account, not to the computer.
I know that an online game's client is updated regularly and that updates use data.
I have identified which of the three payment shapes the game I am considering uses, from the vendor's own pages.
I have decided which email address the account will use, and it is one I can open myself.
That email address is not shared with someone who should not be able to reset the account password.
I understand that the one email to expect is the activation message, and that others claiming to be about the account deserve suspicion.