Australia’s online safety regulator has warned that major gaming platforms, including Steam and Roblox, still have significant gaps in their measures to protect children from harmful online content and contact.
The eSafety Commissioner said its latest transparency report found substantial differences in the safety measures used by Roblox, Steam, Fortnite and Minecraft. The review examined information provided by the companies covering the period from October 2025 to March 2026.
According to eSafety, some platforms have strengthened their protections since receiving regulatory notices, but important weaknesses remain. The regulator said gaming services need stronger systems to prevent children from being exposed to serious harms, including exploitation, sexual extortion and violent or extremist material.
Steam operator Valve came in for particular criticism. The regulator said Valve was the only provider among those assessed that did not use hash-matching technology across its services to identify and remove previously identified harmful material.
eSafety also said Valve did not use proactive tools to detect harmful material in Steam Chat, including community group chats, beyond a system mainly designed to block scam-related links. The regulator said this left chat services with limited protections against certain forms of harmful content.
Age verification was another area of concern. During the period examined, Steam relied on users declaring their own ages and did not collect information to verify whether users were children or adults. Steam has since introduced credit-card age checks for access to R18+ games in Australia, while eSafety said it is seeking additional age-assurance options.
Roblox, meanwhile, has introduced stronger age-assurance measures. From December 2025, the platform began limiting access to some higher-risk features for Australian users unless they could be verified as adults. The regulator said Roblox had also made other safety improvements, although it identified areas where further work was needed.
The report also found differences in how platforms identify users who return after being banned for serious violations. While Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite use multiple indicators to detect banned users attempting to create new accounts, eSafety said Valve used fewer indicators.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said Australian children should be able to play online without being exposed to predators or other serious risks. She urged gaming companies to adopt proven safeguards, improve age assurance and share information about emerging threats across the gaming industry.
The regulator said around nine in 10 Australian children aged between eight and 17 have played online games, highlighting the importance of stronger protections as gaming platforms increasingly become spaces for social interaction as well as entertainment.
The findings do not mean that every child using these platforms will encounter harmful material. Rather, eSafety said the report highlights differences in the systems companies use to identify and prevent risks and called for further improvements across the industry.