Full Breakdown
Australian regulator flags safety gaps on major gaming platforms
By Drooid · · How we work
Core findings of the eSafety report
Australia’s eSafety Commission examined how four leading gaming services protected users between October 2025 and March 2026. Its research found that roughly nine-in-ten Australian children aged 8-17 had played online games. The review identified “significant gaps” in child-safety measures across Valve’s Steam and Steam Chat, Roblox, Epic Games’ Fortnite and Microsoft-owned Minecraft.
Platform-specific safety practices
- Valve (Steam/Steam Chat) – The report noted that Valve was the only provider that did not employ the industry-wide technology used to detect and remove known harmful content. Its systems mainly flagged scams, and it failed to use tools that proactively identify child sexual exploitation or violent material.
- Roblox – Like Valve, Roblox relied solely on internal datasets to train language-detection models and did not regularly retrain those models.
- Fortnite (Epic Games) – Although Fortnite offers child accounts, access to higher-risk communication features is based on self-declared age, and the platform did not share child-sexual-exploitation signals through the Technology Coalition’s Lantern programme.
- Minecraft (Mojang Studios/Microsoft) – The service also depends on users self-declaring their age, allowing adults to access higher-risk chat functions.
Age verification and content-moderation gaps
All four platforms primarily used self-declaration for age checks. Steam has recently added credit-card verification, and Roblox strengthened its age checks in December 2023, but the report found overall verification to be weak. In addition, the platforms varied in how they shared information with industry initiatives aimed at combating child sexual exploitation and violent extremism.
Official statements & responses
“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,” — Inman-Grant
“Predatory adults know this and often make first contact with children on games before grooming them for sexual exploitation or for radicalisation” — Ms Inman Grant, esafety commissioner
The eSafety Commissioner said the services must improve detection of serious harms. Valve, Epic Games, Microsoft and Roblox were contacted for comment but had not responded at the time of publication.
Why the gaps matter
Australia’s recent online-safety policies—including a ban on social-media accounts for users under 16—do not extend to gaming platforms. The regulator warns that inadequate safeguards could expose children to sexual exploitation, extortion and extremist content, underscoring the need for stronger age verification and proactive content-moderation across the gaming ecosystem.