Australia’s eSafety regulator has identified substantial deficiencies in the child protection measures implemented by major gaming platforms.
The report revealed inconsistent safety approaches across Steam, Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft, despite research indicating that 90% of Australian children aged 8-17 engage in online gaming.
“Australian children deserve the right to engage in online gaming without exposure to predators, sexual extortionists, violent extremist content, or other harmful material,” stated eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.
Roblox affirmed that it “prioritizes the safety of our Australian community, particularly its youngest users.” Comments from the other platforms are pending.
According to Inman Grant, inadequate safety measures enable “predatory adults” to contact children for purposes of grooming, sexual exploitation, or radicalization.
The report determined that Valve, the US gaming company behind Steam and Steam Chat, was the sole provider not utilizing industry-standard technology for detecting and removing known harmful content.
Furthermore, Valve did not “proactively” employ tools to detect child sexual exploitation or violent content in chats, with existing systems primarily identifying scams, according to the report.
The report noted that Roblox, similar to Valve, relied solely on internal datasets for training language detection systems and failed to regularly update these models.
“We expect these services to improve their efforts in identifying and combating serious harms, including child sexual exploitation, sexual extortion, and material or activity that promotes, incites, or instructs violence,” Inman Grant stated.
The report highlighted that Minecraft and Fortnite, which offer child accounts, generally allow users to self-declare their age, meaning anyone claiming to be an adult could access “higher-risk communication features.”
Steam similarly relied on user self-declaration of age, though the report acknowledged the platform had recently implemented credit card-based age verification, while Roblox had strengthened age checks since December of the previous year.
Another concern raised was the inconsistent approach these four gaming platforms took in sharing information and participating in industry initiatives.
Mojang Studios, the developer of Minecraft, and Roblox shared industry expertise in combating child sexual exploitation and violent extremism online, whereas Valve did not.
Additionally, Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, failed to share breach incidents with other platforms under a global program designed to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
The report was based on information gathered by Australia’s eSafety Commission regarding how these platforms were protecting users from serious online harm between October 2025 and March 2026.
Australia has garnered global attention in recent years for its online safety stance, having introduced a world-leading social media ban for those under 16 last December – which excluded gaming platforms – and more recently pushing tech giants to offer users the option to opt-out of social media algorithms.
A Roblox spokesperson stated that the company had “invested heavily” in child safeguards, including mandatory age checks.
Valve, Fortnite, and Microsoft, which owns Minecraft, have been contacted for comment.