Summary:
- Main theme of these changes is to make sure good games get attention and bad games become invisible.
- Make curators more useful/make life easier for curators. Valve wants more people to be curators. There may be some kind of leveling system.
- Refine recommendations further by making many more metrics of a game publicly available (not sales though). Users will be able to see exactly why a game appears. A goal of Valve's is for a user to never see a game they aren't interested in.
- Steam Explorers: Sign-up program to give exposure to games that deserve it. Users will have their own forum to discuss the games and arrange multiplayer. Still will be required to buy the game but Valve is thinking about giving perks like a once per week no-strings-attached refund for games they are exploring.
- Valve will be giving developers the ability to directly give users games through Steam. Should cut down on people imitating reviewers to get keys to resell.
- Valve wants to use Steam Direct to make sure "Fake Games" can't make any money. Games like asset flips or trading card milling games, or games that just plain don't work. See Jim Sterling for examples of these type of games. Valve will have a set of rules for games on Steam Direct, and games can be removed if a game or the developer is in violation of the rules.
- Steam Support: Over the past few years, Valve has hired two external companies to provide the majority of "front-line support". There is a division within Valve to deal with cases that the external companies can't deal with. Valve is looking to further improve it, though they are hoping that by making the Steam store a better place support will be less necessary.
Worth nothing, this is all still in development. Some or all of these may be changed upon release/scrapped altogether. There is no timetable on this, so don't expect all of this to drop next month.