Australia

Australia Finds Child Safety Gaps in Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, Steam

Should online child safety be forced on gaming platforms or can the industry police itself?

4 hours ago·Updated 1 hour ago

Australia Finds Child Safety Gaps in Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, Steam

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Above: A photo illustration of a child sitting in front of a computer screen. Image credit: Nazar Abbas Photography/Getty Images

The Facts

Australia's eSafety Commissioner published a report on Friday, finding "significant gaps" in how the companies that own Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and Steam protect children, following compulsory information-gathering notices issued to the four providers in April.
eSafety Commissioner
eSafety Commissioner
7NEWS
BBC News
The notices required the firms to provide details on how their services met the Australian government's Basic Online Safety Expectations under the Online Safety Act 2021 between Oct. 1, 2025, and March 31, 2026.
eSafety Commissioner
Federal Register of Legislation
Valve, the owner of Steam, came under particular scrutiny, with the report noting that it did not use hash-matching tools — which can identify and remove previously confirmed child sexual exploitation, abuse or violence material without reanalyzing the content — and boasted limited chat protections, apart from an anti-scam URL detection tool.
eSafety Commissioner
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Australian
Along with Roblox, Valve also relied entirely on internal datasets to train its language analysis models. The Commissioner wrote that Roblox did not frequently update several of its tools with this data, while Valve failed to update its data sources regularly after initial training.
eSafety Commissioner
Meanwhile, Minecraft and Epic Games relied mainly on self-declared ages, allowing users claiming to be 18 or older to access "high-risk features." In contrast, Roblox introduced stronger age-gating measures in December 2025, while Steam began credit card checks for 18-plus games in September 2026.
eSafety Commissioner
In a statement, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the report showed there was still "significant work to be done …to prevent serious harms in online gaming." It comes as reports suggest roughly nine in 10 Australian children aged 8 to 17 play online games.
eSafety Commissioner
eSafety Commissioner

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ESTAB

The Spin

Industry-critical narrative

Children deserve the same guarantee online that toys on a shelf already carry: built-in safety before launch, not patched after a child is groomed or radicalized. Gaming giants have shown that voluntary goodwill produces wildly uneven protection, with some refusing even basic detection tools or intelligence sharing. If this continues, then Australia will apply regulatory muscle until they get their act together.

eSafety Commissioner

Pro-industry narrative

Gaming platforms already ban grooming, sextortion, exploitation material and predatory contact with minors, with enforcement ranging from lockouts to bans and referrals to child protection authorities. Detailed rules on payments, trading, random-item odds and age-gated features show self-governance that adapts faster than any regulator's checklist, while player reporting and parental controls keep the system honest.