Australia says platforms like Steam and Roblox have 'significant' child safety gaps

What the report says

Australia’s online safety regulator says major gaming services including Steam, Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft have “significant” gaps in child protection. In a report released by eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the regulator said the platforms used inconsistent safety measures and, in some cases, relied too heavily on age declarations or limited systems to spot harmful content and behaviour. The BBC reported the findings were based on information gathered between October 2025 and March 2026.

The report said children in Australia are widely exposed to online gaming, and warned that weak safeguards can create openings for predatory adults, grooming, sexual exploitation, violent extremist content and other harmful material. It also said Valve, which owns Steam and Steam Chat, did not use some industry-standard detection tools and did not proactively look for certain kinds of abuse in chats. Roblox and Valve were also singled out for training some language-detection systems only on internal data.

Minecraft and Fortnite were criticised for age checks that, in some cases, still let users self-declare their age, which can allow access to higher-risk communication features. The report also raised concerns about uneven cooperation between companies in sharing safety information and participating in industry programmes. Australia has recently taken a more interventionist approach to online safety, including a social media ban for under-16s that does not cover gaming platforms.