Valve has promised to revise its Steam interface to improve curation and weed out shovelware. Though the ideas are still in the planning stages, we're starting to get a better idea of how it intends to pull it off–including an ambitious-sounding plan to recruit users to act as a proving ground for games.

Valve invited commentators especially known for criticizing Steam curation like Jim Sterling (below) to visit the offices and talk with programmers about some of their plans. First, to the question of how the curation has allowed for so much shovelware to flood the market, Valve programmers noted that sometimes the lack of filter leads to surprises. They pointed to visual novels as a prime example, since it was a genre they had no idea would be so popular before it was easily available on the market place.

It also suggested that some games simply take advantage of the Steam Trading Card economy, in a way that Valve intends to fix with changes to how trading cards would work. It even dubbed these exploitative pieces of software "fake games," since they weren't meant to function well as video games themselves, and were instead simply a shell toward reaping the trading card rewards.

In the future, Valve also intends to give more information about what's being recommended and why, and to provide more public data on games that are released through the service. That could include factors like sales, but also more nuanced ones like time played or how it was discovered.

The most ambitious part of the plan is what's being called "Steam Explorers." Low-selling games would essentially stay off any visible part of the storefront. That way, these "fake games" would still be available for users specifically seeking them out, but wouldn't clog the storefront for everyone else. Explorers would aid in discoverability, by opting in to play these low-selling games and flagging ones that are actually hidden gems. Explorers would also get rewarded for their time, with some kind of bonus like store credit. Sterling was careful to note that the exact nature of the rewards is still something under discussion.

There's no timeline for these changes yet, as Valve is still in the early planning phases and seemed to be bouncing ideas off of its biggest critics while still laying the roadmap ahead. We'll see how they pan out eventually, but they sound like positive steps overall.