Australia warns Steam, Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft of big child‑safety gaps

Australia’s eSafety Commission has published a report that finds serious shortcomings in the child‑protection measures of four of the world’s most popular online‑gaming platforms. The study notes that Valve’s Steam, Roblox, Epic’s Fortnite and Microsoft’s Minecraft allow children to sign up with only self‑declared ages in many cases, and that the platforms’ content‑moderation systems fall short of industry best practice.

In particular, Valve is the only platform that does not use automated text‑analysis tools known to detect sexual or extremist content, and only flags account‑fraud scams. Roblox, too, relies on internal data sets and rarely updates its language‑detection models. The report calls for each platform to “lift their game” and adopt proactive measures to catch child sexual exploitation, extortion and extremist propaganda.

Fortnite and Minecraft allow users to create child accounts, but the study found that both services let anyone who claims to be an adult access higher‑risk communication features. Steam has recently introduced age checks that use credit‑card verification, while Roblox added stronger checks in December.

The regulator also criticised the inconsistent sharing of breach data across the industry. Mojang and Roblox have contributed to global initiatives, but Valve has not, and Epic has not reported breaches to a coordinated programme aimed at stopping child abuse online.

Australia has led the global push for stricter online safety, having banned social media for users under‑16 last December and demanding that tech giants give children the option to opt out of algorithmic feeds.