Australia's online safety regulator has identified what it describes as significant shortcomings in child protection measures across several major gaming platforms, including Steam, Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft.
The findings come as research shows that nine in 10 Australian children aged between eight and 17 play online games.
Concerns over online safety
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said children should be able to play online without being exposed to predatory behaviour, sexual exploitation, extremist material or other harmful content.
According to the report, weak safety controls can allow adults to establish contact with children before attempting grooming, sexual extortion or radicalisation.
Steam singled out
The report found that Valve, the company behind Steam and Steam Chat, was the only provider assessed that did not use widely adopted industry technology designed to detect and remove known harmful material.
Regulators said Valve also did not proactively use tools to identify child sexual exploitation content or violent material within chats, relying primarily on systems aimed at detecting scams.
The report further noted that both Valve and Roblox rely on internal datasets to train language-detection systems and do not regularly retrain those models.
Age verification concerns
The regulator also highlighted concerns around age verification.
According to the report, Minecraft and Fortnite generally allow users to self-declare their age, meaning individuals who claim to be adults may gain access to higher-risk communication functions.
Steam similarly relies on self-declared ages, although regulators acknowledged the platform has recently introduced age checks using payment card verification.
The report also noted that Roblox strengthened its age-verification processes last December.
Industry cooperation varies
Australian authorities said gaming companies differ significantly in how they cooperate with wider industry efforts to combat online harm.
The report praised Mojang Studios, which develops Minecraft, and Roblox for sharing expertise related to online child protection and violent extremism.
By contrast, Valve was criticised for not participating in the same way.
The report also stated that Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, did not share incidents through an international programme designed to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Roblox responds
A Roblox spokesperson said the company prioritises the safety of its Australian users, particularly children, and has invested heavily in safety features, including mandatory age-verification measures.
Valve, Epic Games and Microsoft, which owns Minecraft, had not publicly commented at the time of publication.
Australia continues push on online regulation
The report is the latest step in Australia's broader effort to strengthen online safety protections.
In recent years, the country has attracted international attention for introducing a ban on social media access for users under 16 and for proposals aimed at giving users more control over recommendation algorithms.
The regulator's latest findings were based on information collected between October 2025 and March 2026 regarding how gaming platforms respond to serious online harms affecting children.
Source: BBC
