Understand
Australian report finds significant child safety gaps in Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and Steam
Overview
Australia's eSafety Commissioner has published a report revealing significant gaps in how major gaming platforms—including Steam, Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft—protect children from online harms. The regulator highlighted inconsistent safety measures, weak age verification systems, and a lack of proactive detection tools for predatory behaviour, sexual exploitation, and violent extremism.
Key points
- Australia's eSafety Commissioner reported significant child safety gaps across popular gaming platforms like Steam, Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft.
- Valve (owner of Steam) was found not to use standard industry technology to detect and remove known harmful content or proactively monitor chats for child sexual exploitation and violent material.
- Minecraft and Fortnite rely heavily on users self-declaring their age, potentially allowing minors access to higher-risk communication features.
- Valve and Roblox were noted for using only internal datasets to train language detection systems without regularly retraining them.
- Epic Games (maker of Fortnite) failed to share breach instances with other platforms under a global programme designed to combat online child sexual abuse.
- Regulators expect these gaming services to improve their measures against child sexual exploitation, sexual extortion, and violent material.