eSafety is concerned online games are being used by sexual predators to groom children. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has fired off legally enforceable “please explain” demands to four online gaming giants, over fears for children’s welfare.
Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and Steam have each been issued with legally enforceable transparency notices over eSafety’s concerns their online games are being used by sexual predators to groom children and by extremist groups to spread violent propaganda and radicalise young people.
The notices require the gaming platforms to explain how they are identifying, preventing and responding to these harms, as well as cyberbullying and online hate.
Compliance with a transparency reporting notice is mandatory, with a range of enforcement options available to eSafety if the companies fail to respond.
Financial penalties can be up to $825,000 a day for each day of non-compliance.
The gaming platforms are also required to comply with minimum obligations under the Online Safety Codes and Standards.
Breaches of a direction to comply with a code or standard can result in penalties of up to $49.5 million per breach.
The transparency notices ask the companies about their systems, staffing and Safety by Design choices aligned with the Federal Government’s Basic Online Safety Expectations.
Ms Inman Grant said in cases of serious online harms such as grooming, sexual extortion and youth radicalisation, online game and gaming-adjacent platforms like encrypted message services could serve as a point of first contact between children and offenders.
“What we often see after these offenders make contact with children in online game environments, they then move children to private messaging services,” Ms Inman Grant said.
“Gaming platforms are amongst the online spaces most heavily used by Australian children, functioning not only as places to play, but also as places to socialise and communicate.
“Our own research into children and gaming showed around nine in 10 children aged eight to 17 in Australia had played online games.
“Predatory adults know this and target children through grooming or embedding terrorist and violent extremist narratives in gameplay, increasing the risks of contact offending, radicalisation and other off-platform harms.”
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has issued transparency notices to four online gaming platforms. Photo: eSafety.
Australia’s Unlawful Material Codes and Standards require online services to implement systems and processes to safeguard Australians from illegal and restricted material.
This includes material that depicts child sexual exploitation, pro-terror material and crime or violence without justification.
There are also requirements on some services to address risks of grooming, which eSafety says often leads to the generation of child sexual exploitation material.
The Commission publishes reports based on its transparency notices to provide information to the public, including parents about safety risks and mitigations that currently exist and to increase the incentive for technology companies to adopt Safety by Design, engineering out harms before they occur.
Ms Inman Grant said ultimately, the aim was to ensure all users, especially children could enjoy the benefits these platforms had to offer without experiencing avoidable harms.
“We’ve seen numerous media reports about grooming taking place on all four of these platforms as well as terrorist and violent extremist-themed gameplay,” she said.
“This includes Islamic State-inspired games and recreations of mass shootings on Roblox, as well as far right groups recreating fascist imagery in Minecraft.
“Media reports have also pointed to games in Fortnite gamifying the horrific events of the WWII Jasenovac concentration camp and the January 6th US Capitol Building riots, while Steam is reportedly a hub for a number of extreme-right communities.
“These online game and gaming-adjacent platforms are used by millions of children and so it is imperative that they take every possible step to protect them and continue to improve safeguards.
“These companies must take meaningful steps to prevent their services becoming onramps to abuse, extremist violence, radicalisation or lifelong harm.”
Roblox committed to make a number of key changes earlier this year to protect children.
Those commitments included imposing more stringent age assurance, making accounts belonging to under 16s private by default and introducing tools to prevent adult users from contacting under 16s without parental consent.
Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, has reached out to Region to explain how the game works in relation to children and extremism.
“Epic’s rules prohibit extremism, child endangerment, dangerous or illegal activities and threats of real-world violence,” a spokesperson said.
“The islands [concentration camp] referred to … violated our rules and we took action against them in 2024.
“Epic’s text chat filters remove mature language including hate speech, and our systems automatically report potentially high-harm interactions in text chat with players under 18 so we can take action.
“Fortnite has built-in protections for younger players including high-privacy default settings for players under 18 and voice and text chat are off for players under 16 until a parent consents. Using Epic’s Parental Controls, parents can customise their family’s experience including choosing who their child can communicate with.”
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
