Australia's online safety regulator has examined how popular gaming platforms protect children and concluded that the results are, to use the technical term, not great. The eSafety Commission found "significant gaps" in the child safety measures of Steam, Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft, with inconsistent approaches across the board. This matters because research shows nine out of 10 Australian children aged 8 to 17 have played online games - a statistic that will surprise absolutely no one who has ever met a child.

"Australian children have a right to play online without being exposed to predators, sexual extortionists, violent extremist content or other harmful material," said eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. Roblox responded that it "prioritises the safety of our Australian community, especially the youngest users." The other platforms have been contacted for comment, presumably via a chat feature that may or may not be monitored.

According to the report, weak safety measures allow "predatory adults" to contact children before grooming them, whether for sexual exploitation or radicalisation. Inman Grant said she expects 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." Lifting one's game is generally considered desirable in gaming, though perhaps not in this specific context.

The report singled out Valve - the US gaming giant behind Steam and Steam Chat - as the only provider that did not use a type of technology widely adopted across the industry to detect and remove known harmful content. Valve also did not "proactively" use tools to detect child sexual exploitation or violent material in chats, with its current systems mainly flagging scams. Roblox and Valve were both noted for using only internal datasets to train their language detection systems and for not regularly retraining these models.

Minecraft and Fortnite, which does offer child accounts, generally let users self-declare their age, the report highlighted - meaning anyone claiming to be an adult could access "higher-risk communication features." Steam likewise relied on self-declared ages, though the report acknowledged the platform recently introduced age checks using credit cards, and that Roblox has strengthened its age checks since last December.

The report also flagged inconsistent information-sharing and participation in industry initiatives. Mojang Studios, developer of Minecraft, and Roblox shared industry expertise on combating child sexual exploitation and violent extremism online. Valve did not. Fortnite maker Epic Games failed to share instances of breaches with other platforms under a global programme designed to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse.

The findings were based on information collected by Australia's eSafety Commission on how the platforms protected users from serious online harm between October 2025 and March 2026. Australia has made global headlines in recent years for its online safety stance, including a world-leading social media ban for under-16s introduced last December - which did not include gaming platforms - and a more recent push to force tech giants to let users opt out of social media algorithms.

A Roblox spokesperson said the company had "invested heavily" in safeguards for children, including mandatory age checks. Valve, Fortnite and Microsoft - which owns Minecraft - have been contacted for comment. Online gaming escaped Australia's social media ban, though critics say it's just as addictive. Australians, meanwhile, have been surveyed on opting out of social media algorithms, with one respondent offering the timeless assessment: "Good to have choice."