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Two Popular Gaming Platforms Face Scrutiny Over Child Safety in Australia

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Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has accepted a court-enforceable undertaking requiring Roblox to strengthen safeguards after regulator testing found gaps in controls intended to limit contact between adults and children. Separately, an October 2026 transparency report compared information from Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and Steam about their child-safety measures. The report does not say all four platforms breached the law.

What eSafety found on Roblox

In 2026 testing, eSafety said adults could send connection requests to young Australian children without parental or carer consent. Adults and children could also view and respond to each other’s forum posts outside game environments without consent. Children’s connections were visible to anyone on Roblox, while account names, connection counts and names, avatar images and non-sensitive biographical details could be seen without an option to restrict that visibility.

These are findings eSafety described from its testing, not an independent assessment of Roblox by this publication. Roblox told eSafety it believes it is meeting its obligations under Australia’s Online Safety Act.

What Roblox is required to change

eSafety accepted a court-enforceable undertaking requiring Roblox to:

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  • Prevent adults from contacting children they do not know without parental consent.
  • Strengthen children’s account settings so accounts are private by default.
  • Provide accessible ways to report concerns and notify users of complaint outcomes.
  • Engage an independent third-party auditor to assess the effectiveness of its safety measures, including age-estimation measures.

According to eSafety’s 2026 release, Roblox has three months to implement the changes. If the company breaches the undertaking, eSafety may apply to the Federal Court for an order requiring compliance and other appropriate orders. The undertaking establishes obligations; it does not itself show that the changes have already been implemented or reduced harm.

How the undertaking followed earlier Roblox commitments

In September 2025, Roblox committed to measures that included private-by-default accounts for users under 16, limits on adults contacting under-16s without parental consent, and disabling some chat features by default until age estimation. At the end of 2025, Roblox told eSafety it had delivered those commitments. In February 2026, eSafety said it would directly test their implementation and effectiveness. Its later testing identified the gaps behind the undertaking. A company’s report that it delivered commitments is not the same as a regulator confirming those measures worked in practice.

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What the wider gaming-platform report covers

eSafety’s October 2026 transparency report covers responses from Roblox, Mojang Studios’ Minecraft, Epic Games’ Fortnite and Valve’s Steam and Steam Chat. The Commissioner selected the services because of their popularity among Australian children and users. Notices issued on 1 April 2026 sought information about measures addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse, violence material and activity, cyberbullying and online hate. Providers were asked how they identify, prevent and respond to harms, and how their systems, staffing and safety-by-design choices align with Australia’s Basic Online Safety Expectations.

The report draws on information providers supplied in response to compulsory notices; it is not a new independent audit of each service. eSafety also says issuing a transparency notice does not, by itself, prove that a provider has deficient safety practices.

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Different approaches to user-created content

The report describes variation in how the services handle potentially high-risk games and experiences:

  • Fortnite: Epic reviewed each Fortnite Island before it became available.
  • Roblox: Roblox used tools to detect harmful user-created Experiences after publication.
  • Minecraft: Mojang relied on proactive scanning and user reports to identify higher-risk third-party servers, including servers accessible to people who self-declared as 18 or older.
  • Steam: Valve used pre-publication review but relied on user reports to identify unlawful material in already-published games.

eSafety also reported differences in detection tools, age assurance and response times to reports. These are descriptions of reported systems and practices, not a basis for naming one service the safest: the report does not establish a single comparative safety measure across the four platforms.

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Why the regulator is focusing on gaming platforms

eSafety’s 2026 release said around nine in 10 Australian children aged 8 to 17 had played online games, citing the Commissioner’s own research. It also cited recent national research estimating about 1.7 million Australian children use Roblox. The estimate is not a count of all Australian children, nor a figure collected directly by eSafety. The Commissioner described Roblox as the second most popular game with children in Australia.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said: “Australian children have a right to play online without being exposed to predators, sexual extortionists, violent extremist content or other harmful material.” In a separate release about the notices, she said: “What we often see after these offenders make contact with children in online game environments, they then move children to private messaging services.” That describes the regulator’s concern about a possible pathway from game spaces to private messaging; it is not a finding that every child on a platform experiences grooming.

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What parents can reasonably take from the findings

The Roblox undertaking is a formal obligation to change specified safeguards, following eSafety’s testing. It is not evidence that every risk has been eliminated, and the regulator’s three-month implementation period means the status of the changes depends on when a family checks. The wider report offers a comparison of reported safety approaches, but does not establish that every service is unsafe or that one is definitively safest.

For parents, the concrete issues raised by eSafety are whether a child’s account and connections are visible, who can initiate contact, how age checks affect access to communication features, and whether reporting a concern produces a response. eSafety’s Commissioner said the undertaking’s independent audit means “Roblox cannot mark their own homework,” underscoring that evaluation of effectiveness is part of the required measures rather than something established by the undertaking’s announcement.

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