Kathmandu. Australia’s online safety regulator has stated that online gaming service providers including Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, and Steam need to improve the safety measures they adopt to protect children from child sexual abuse and other harmful content.
A report released on Friday by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant stated that there are significant differences in the measures adopted by various game service providers for child safety.
According to the report, related companies have adopted inconsistent measures to block high-risk games and content accessible to children. It has been stated that such games and content can create an environment for child sexual abuse and can encourage crime or violence.
“Children in Australia have the right to play online without being exposed to predators, child sexual abuse, violent extremist content, or other harmful material,” said Commissioner Inman Grant. She stated that service providers should use systems that identify and block serious risks before children are exposed to such content.
The report mentions that although providers of Fortnite and Minecraft have made safety arrangements for child accounts, they primarily rely on the age-related details self-declared by the user. The report states that this creates a situation where adult users can gain access to high-risk features without further age verification.
Similarly, the report mentions that Valve, the operator of the game distribution platform Steam, has not used the necessary tools to actively identify harmful activities that may occur in Steam chat.
It has been found that Roblox and Valve have only used internal data for the development and training of language identification systems and have not regularly retrained these systems.
Commissioner Inman Grant stated that it is important for gaming service providers to adopt effective, meaningful, and continuous safety measures to ensure the safety of young players.
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