Mobile gaming is cheap, convenient and easy to overdo. This page brings our safety advice together in one place: how to avoid unsafe apps, how to stay in control of what you spend, and how to keep play in proportion.
Playing 6 Club responsibly
- Decide on a time and spending limit before you log in, and stick to it.
- Take a break at least every 30 minutes.
- Never chase results. Every round is random, so a run of losses doesn’t make a win more likely.
- 6 Club is for players aged 18 and over.
Ready to play within your limits? Log in to 6 Club.
Installing games safely
The single most effective habit is also the simplest: install only from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.
- Ignore APK files shared through WhatsApp, Telegram or comment sections, however trustworthy the sender seems. A modified installer can carry anything.
- Check the developer name on the store listing, not just the game name. Popular games attract near-identical clones with swapped letters.
- Read the one-star reviews before the five-star ones. Clones and ad-abusive apps get called out there first.
- Look at the review count alongside the rating. A 4.8 average from 90 reviews tells you much less than 4.2 from 400,000.
Checking permissions
A puzzle game does not need your contacts, your SMS messages, your call log, or your precise location. On Android, open Settings, then Apps, pick the game, and open Permissions. Deny anything that has no obvious connection to gameplay; if the game then breaks, you have learned something useful about it.
Be particularly wary of any game requesting accessibility permissions, the ability to draw over other apps, or SMS access. Those are the permissions that abusive apps rely on.
Keeping spending at zero
Free-to-play games make money from a small number of people spending a lot, and their design reflects that. If you do not want to spend:
- Turn on purchase authentication. On Android, Play Store, Settings, Authentication, require biometrics or a password for every purchase.
- Remove saved payment methods from your store account entirely if you never intend to buy anything.
- Treat “limited time” offers as the pressure tactic they are. The timer will come back.
- Uninstall any game whose enjoyment now depends on a purchase. There are thousands of alternatives.
Settings for younger players
- On Android, Google Play, Settings, Family, Parental controls lets you restrict games by content rating and require approval for downloads and purchases.
- On iOS, Settings, Screen Time, Content and Privacy Restrictions covers the same ground, including a hard block on in-app purchases.
- Google Family Link gives per-app time limits and a daily total for a child’s device.
- Set these up with the child present rather than in secret. Rules that are explained get followed for longer than rules that are discovered.
Keeping play in proportion
Nothing here is medical advice, but a few signals are worth noticing in yourself or someone else: playing considerably longer than intended, hiding how much you play, losing sleep to it, or feeling irritable when you cannot play. Practical steps that help:
- Decide the session length before you start, and set an actual alarm rather than trusting yourself to notice.
- Use your phone’s own bedtime or wind-down mode so that games get quiet at a fixed hour.
- Keep at least one day a week with no gaming at all; it makes the habit visible.
- Delete games that you keep returning to out of compulsion rather than enjoyment. Reinstalling takes two minutes if you were wrong.
If gaming is causing genuine problems with work, study, sleep, money or relationships, talk to a doctor or a qualified counsellor. That is not an overreaction.