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

2 October 2026, 03: 07 BST. Updated 32 minutes ago.

Key points

• Mojang Studios, developer of Minecraft, and Roblox shared industry expertise in combating child sexual exploitation as well as violent extremism online, but Valve did not.
• Valve, Fortnite, Roblox and Microsoft – which owns Minecraft – have been contacted for comment.
• "Australian children have a right to play online without being exposed to predators, sexual extortionists, violent extremist content or other harmful material, " eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant remarked.
• Roblox, along with Valve, were observed in the report as using only internal datasets to train language detection systems and for not regularly retraining these models.
• Australia's online safety regulator has discovered "significant gaps" in how popular gaming platforms protect children online.

In a new report it discovered inconsistent approaches in how Steam, Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft implement child safety measures as research indicates nine out of 10 children aged 8 to 17 in Australia have played online games.

Subdued safety on platforms allow "predatory adults" to produce contact with children before grooming them, she noted, for sexual exploitation or radicalisation.

Notably, the report discovered that Valve – the US gaming giant that owns Steam and Steam Chat – was the only provider that did not apply a type of technology widely applied by the industry to detect and remove known harmful content.

Valve additionally did not "proactively" apply tools to detect child sexual exploitation or violent material in chats, with current systems mainly flagging scams, the report discovered.

"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 remarked.

Minecraft and Fortnite, which does offer child accounts, generally let users self-declare their age, the report highlighted, meaning anyone who remarked they were adults could access "higher-risk communication features".

Steam additionally relied on users self-declaring their age but the report acknowledged the platform had lately introduced age checks using credit cards, and that Roblox had put in stronger age checks since last December.

Another matter raised by the report was the inconsistent manner in which the four gaming platforms shared information and participated in industry initiatives.

Elsewhere, Fortnite maker Epic Games failed to share instances of breaches with other platforms under a global programme that was designed to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Notably, the report was based on information collected by Australia's eSafety Commission on how the platforms were protecting users from serious online harm between October 2025 and March 2026.

After it introduced its world-leading social media ban for under-16s last December – which did not include gaming platforms – and a more recent push to force tech giants to offer users a chance to opt-out of social media algorithms, australia has created global headlines over recent years for its stance on online safety.

For now, australia says platforms like Steam and Roblox have ' significant' child safety gaps remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.