Australia warns gaming platforms have major child safety failings
Australia's eSafety Commissioner has warned that major gaming platforms including Steam, Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft have "significant gaps" in how they protect children online. The regulatory report found inconsistent approaches to child safety, with platforms failing to adequately detect and remove harmful content such as child sexual exploitation material, sexual extortion and violent extremist content. Julie Inman Grant said gaming companies must "lift their game" to prevent predatory adults from grooming children on their platforms.
The investigation, conducted between October 2025 and March 2026, revealed that Valve (which owns Steam) is the only provider that does not use industry-standard technology to detect known harmful content. Both Valve and Roblox rely solely on internal datasets to train their content detection systems without regular retraining. Many platforms including Minecraft and Fortnite allow users to simply self-declare their age to access features, creating opportunities for adults to access restricted areas. The report also noted poor information sharing between platforms, with Epic Games (Fortnite's developer) failing to report breaches under a global programme designed to combat child sexual abuse online.
- Valve's Steam platform lacks industry-standard technology to detect harmful content
- Platforms rely heavily on self-declared ages, creating risks for children online
- Poor cross-platform information sharing hampers efforts to combat child exploitation
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Australia's eSafety Commissioner is the government regulator responsible for child safety online. Gaming platforms such as Steam, Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft are widely used by millions of children worldwide, making them a key focus for child safety regulation.
These gaming platforms allow children to interact with strangers online. This creates risks of exposure to harmful content and contact with adults who may seek to exploit them, which platforms attempt to prevent through content detection and age verification systems. However, the effectiveness of these safeguards varies between platforms.
The Commissioner examines how well platforms protect children and investigates instances of harm. Inconsistencies in safety approaches across platforms mean protection levels differ depending on where children are playing.
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Originally published by BBC World as “Australia says platforms like Steam and Roblox have ‘significant’ child safety gaps”.