Overview
- Australia's eSafety Commission issued legally enforceable transparency notices on Wednesday to Roblox, Microsoft's Minecraft, Epic Games' Fortnite and Valve's Steam.
- The notices demand details on safety systems, staffing and moderation, with fines reported up to A$825,000 per day and possible civil action for non-compliance.
- The regulator said predators often contact children in game chats then move them to private messaging services, which makes grooming and sexual extortion harder to detect.
- Roblox, which settled with Alabama and West Virginia on Tuesday for more than $23 million, also faces over 140 U.S. lawsuits alleging it enabled child sexual exploitation.
- Research cited by the watchdog shows nine in ten Australians aged 8 to 17 play online games, making these platforms major social spaces that are harder to police in real time than traditional social media.