Your kids’ favorite games have serious safety gaps, Australian regulator warns
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If your kids spend their evenings building in Minecraft or dropping into Fortnite, you need to pay attention. In Australia, almost every child between 8 and 17 has gamed online at some point, which is why a new report from the country’s online safety regulator should make every parent sit up.
As reported by the BBC, Australia’s eSafety Commission has found major holes in how Steam, Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft keep children safe. Each platform handles safety in its own way, and some are clearly lagging behind the rest.
What did the regulator find?
Valve, the company behind Steam, came out looking the worst. Every other platform in the report relies on a common tool the industry uses to spot and pull down known harmful material, but Valve doesn’t. Its chat moderation is also built mainly to catch scams, so it isn’t actively searching for child abuse or violent content.
Valve and Roblox also teach their chat-scanning systems using only their own data, and they rarely update them. Over at Minecraft and Fortnite, your age is basically whatever you say it is. Fortnite has child accounts, but a kid who types in an adult age can still reach the riskier chat options.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant warned that weak protections give predators an easy way to reach and groom kids. She said Australian children “have a right to play online” safely and wants these services to “lift their game.”
What does this mean for parents?
It’s not all bad news. Steam now verifies age with credit cards, and Roblox has toughened up its age checks since last December. Roblox and Mojang, the studio behind Minecraft, also work with other companies to tackle child exploitation and extremism.
Roblox says it has poured serious money into protecting kids, including making age checks mandatory. Valve, Epic Games, and Microsoft, which owns Minecraft, have been asked to respond.
Australia’s under-16 social media ban, which kicked in last December, didn’t cover gaming platforms. Hopefully, this report nudges them to tighten things up. Until then, it’s worth keeping an eye on who your kids are chatting with in their favorite games.
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