Australian Regulator Flags Major Child Safety Issues on Gaming Platforms

Australia's online safety regulator has identified "significant gaps" in the child safety measures implemented by popular gaming platforms, including Steam, Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft. The findings come as a report indicates that nine out of 10 Australian children aged 8 to 17 participate in online gaming.

In a new report, the eSafety Commissioner stated that inconsistent approaches by these platforms leave children vulnerable to predatory adults, sexual exploitation, violent extremist content, and other harmful material. "Australian children have a right to play online without being exposed to predators, sexual extortionists, violent extremist content or other harmful material," said eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.

The report singled out Valve, the U.S. company behind Steam and Steam Chat, for not using a widely adopted industry technology designed to detect and remove known harmful content. Valve's current systems primarily flag scams, with no proactive tools in place to detect child sexual exploitation or violent material within chats, according to the report.

Roblox and Valve were also noted for training their language detection systems using only internal datasets and for not regularly retraining these models. "We expect these services to lift their game to identify and combat serious harms such as child sexual exploitation, sexual extortion and material and activity which promotes, incites or instructs violence," Inman-Grant stated.

Platforms like Minecraft and Fortnite, which offer child accounts, generally permit users to self-declare their age. This practice allows anyone to access higher-risk communication features by claiming to be an adult. Steam also relies on self-declared age, although the report acknowledged recent introductions of age verification via credit cards. Roblox has reportedly implemented stronger age checks since December.

Further concerns were raised regarding the inconsistent sharing of information and participation in industry initiatives among the four gaming platforms. While Mojang Studios, the developer of Minecraft, and Roblox have shared expertise in combating child sexual exploitation and violent extremism, Valve has not. Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, reportedly failed to share instances of breaches with other platforms under a global program aimed at combating online child sexual exploitation and abuse.

The eSafety Commission's report is based on data collected between October 2025 and March 2026 concerning how these platforms protect users from serious online harm. Australia has previously garnered international attention for its online safety policies, including its introduction of a social media ban for individuals under 16 in December, which excluded gaming platforms, and a recent initiative pushing tech companies to offer users the option to opt-out of social media algorithms. Valve, Fortnite, Roblox, and Microsoft, the owner of Minecraft, have been contacted for comment.