Australia's eSafety Commission Warns Gaming Platforms Over Child Safety Gaps

Australian children have a right to play online without being exposed to predators, sexual extortionists, violent extremist content or other harmful material, Julie Inman Grant said after the eSafety Commission found inconsistent age verification and chat monitoring as nine out of 10 Australian children aged 8 to 17 play online games.

Australia’s online safety regulator has issued a warning to the gaming industry, finding significant gaps in how popular platforms protect children from online harm. The eSafety Commission assessed safety practices across Steam, Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft in a report covering the period between October 2025 and March 2026.

Regulators warn that inadequate safeguards leave young users vulnerable to bad actors.

Australian children have a right to play online without being exposed to predators, sexual extortionists, violent extremist content or other harmful material,

Julie Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner

Inman Grant noted that weak platform safety allows predatory adults to make initial contact with children before grooming them for sexual exploitation or radicalization.

Valve and Steam Criticized Over Chat Moderation and Safety Tools

The regulatory report singles out Valve, the US gaming giant that owns Steam and Steam Chat, as the only provider evaluated that did not use industry-standard technology to detect and remove known harmful content.

Investigators found that Steam failed to proactively deploy tools capable of identifying child sexual exploitation or violent material within chat features, as current systems on the platform primarily target scams. Both Valve and Roblox rely on internal datasets to train language detection systems and fail to regularly retrain 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,

Julie Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner

Age Verification Loopholes Across Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox

Minecraft and Fortnite offer child accounts but generally permit users to self-declare their age, creating inconsistent age verification methods across the four gaming environments examined in the report. This loophole allows anyone claiming to be an adult to access higher-risk communication features.

Steam also historically relied on user self-declaration, though the regulator acknowledged that the platform recently introduced credit card-based age checks. Roblox implemented stronger mandatory age checks starting last December.

Industry Cooperation Differs Across Minecraft, Fortnite, Roblox, and Steam

Mojang Studios, which develops Minecraft, and Roblox actively shared industry expertise regarding the fight against child sexual exploitation and violent extremism online, whereas Valve did not participate in those collaborative efforts.

Meanwhile, Epic Games—the maker of Fortnite—failed to share instances of platform breaches with partner organizations under a global program designed specifically to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse.

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,

Julie Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner