Australia‘s online safety watchdog has warned that some major gaming platforms are not doing enough to protect children from serious online dangers.
A new report from the eSafety Commissioner examined four popular services: Steam, Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft. The review found major differences in the way these platforms deal with risks to young users.
Online gaming is extremely popular among Australian children. Research shows that about nine in 10 children between the ages of eight and 17 play games online.
Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, emphasised that children should enjoy gaming without encountering dangerous adults or harmful content.
She warned that weak safety systems can allow predators to contact children. These adults may attempt to groom young users for sexual exploitation. Children could also be exposed to sexual extortion, violent material or extremist content.
The report raised particular concerns about Valve, the company behind Steam and Steam Chat. It found that Valve was the only provider among the four that did not use a widely adopted technology to identify and remove known harmful material.
Steam also did not appear to use proactive systems to identify child sexual exploitation or violent content in chats. Its existing tools mainly focus on detecting scams.
Roblox and Valve were also criticised for relying on their internal data when training their language detection systems. The report said these systems were not regularly retrained.
Age checks were another concern. Minecraft and Fortnite generally allow users to state their age. This could mean that someone pretending to be an adult may gain access to communication features that carry greater risks.
Steam also relied on self-declared ages. However, it has recently introduced credit card-based age checks. Roblox has also strengthened its age verification system since December.
The report also looked at how gaming companies cooperate to fight online abuse. Roblox and Mojang Studios, the developer of Minecraft, shared information and expertise on issues such as child sexual exploitation and violent extremism.
Valve did not take part in the same way. Epic Games, which operates Fortnite, was also criticised for not sharing certain breach information through an international programme aimed at fighting online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
The findings were based on information collected between October 2025 and March 2026. Roblox said it has invested heavily in child safety and has introduced mandatory age checks. Valve, Epic Games and Microsoft, which owns Minecraft, were contacted for comment.
Australia has taken a strong position on online safety recently. The country introduced a social media ban for children under 16 in December. The ban did not include gaming services.
