2026 edition

The 2026 edition: scope, shortlist and limits

An edition is a dated snapshot. This page explains what the September 2026 snapshot covers, how the category was drawn, why the shortlist contains a single detailed entry, and what would have to change for the next edition to look different.

Why the edition carries a date

Games in this category change constantly. Servers move, sign-up flows are rewritten, storefronts change what they sell, and a classification decision recorded one year may be revisited the next. A page that simply says “current” hides all of that movement. A dated edition does the opposite: it tells a reader exactly how old the information is and lets them decide whether to trust it or go to the vendor directly.

This edition was compiled in September 2026 and reviewed on 22 September 2026. Every factual statement in it was checked against its source on that date. If you are reading this considerably later, treat the practical details — sign-up steps, platform support, prices of any kind — as historical, and confirm them on the vendor's own site before acting.

How the category boundary was drawn

Four properties define the category. All four have to be present; a title missing any one of them is outside the edition, and being outside it is not a judgement about quality.

Played against other people, online

The core activity is matches with or against other human players over the internet. A game with a solo campaign and an optional multiplayer mode bolted on sits awkwardly here; a game whose main mode is a populated online match does not.

Set in the Second World War

The setting is the 1939–1945 conflict, its equipment and its theatres. Titles set in other conflicts, or in invented ones that borrow the aesthetic, are a different category with different audiences and are not covered.

Distributed for desktop computers

The title is installed on a Windows, macOS or Linux computer. Console and mobile releases are excluded, because the practical material on this site — installation, account setup, hardware considerations — would be wrong for them.

Reachable from Australia

A player connecting from an Australian internet connection can register and play without needing to misrepresent where they are. This is a practical boundary, not a legal one, and it is the reason the edition is written in Australian terms throughout.

Why the shortlist has exactly one detailed entry

The category contains more than one title. The shortlist that receives a full entry contains one, and the reason is a rule about sources rather than a judgement about games.

A full entry on this site has to describe a product. Every sentence of that description must be traceable to a document published by someone who is accountable for it — the studio, the distributor, or an advertiser writing a description that the advertising network holds them to. For Enlisted, such a document exists and this publisher has it. For other titles in the category, this publisher has nothing equivalent: no supplied description, no direct relationship, and no testing programme of its own.

The alternative would be to write entries assembled from other people's reviews, forum posts and memory. That is how most thin comparison pages are built, and it is precisely the practice this method was designed to avoid. Repeating an unverified claim does not make it verified; it just moves the mistake somewhere new.

So the edition names one title in detail, states plainly that the publisher is paid when readers register for it, and directs anyone comparing options to sources that are not paid by anybody: the vendors' own sites and the Australian bodies listed on the home page.

What the edition found, stated carefully

Three observations survived the checks. None of them is about which game is best.

Documentation quality varies more than the games do. Advertiser descriptions in this category are written to convey atmosphere: theatres of war, vehicles, scale. They rarely answer the questions that determine whether a player will still be enjoying the game in six weeks, such as how much is spent in a typical month, how long a match takes, or what happens when a password is lost.

Desktop-only distribution remains normal. The arrangement behind the covered title applies to Windows, macOS and Linux computers. For a reader whose main device is a phone or a console, that is a decisive fact, and it is usually stated in small print on a store page rather than in the advertising.

The Australian-specific answers rarely come from the vendor at all. Classification, consumer guarantees and the route for a privacy complaint are all determined by Australian bodies, not by a studio's marketing. That is why roughly half of this site consists of guides pointing at those bodies rather than at any product.

What would change the next edition

Editions should move when the facts move, and it is useful to say in advance what counts as movement.

• A covered title changing the platforms it supports, its sign-up flow, or its account recovery process.
• A new commercial arrangement, which would add an entry — and would be disclosed in the same sentence that introduced it.
• An arrangement ending, which would remove the paid links but not the entry, since a reader who arrived from an older link deserves to find the same description.
• A change in Australian classification, consumer or privacy law that makes any guidance on this site out of date.
• A correction from a reader or from a studio. These are applied immediately and noted on the page concerned.

Using this edition sensibly

The edition is most useful as a checklist to take somewhere else. Read the nine checks, decide which of them matter to you, and then answer them on the vendor's own site rather than accepting a third party's summary — including this one. Where this site can genuinely help is in naming the questions and in pointing at the Australian bodies whose answers carry weight.

Where it cannot help is in telling you which game you will enjoy. No document can do that, and any page that claims to has stopped describing and started selling.