Valve says it's "fully aware" of the AI slop flooding Steam. Rather than filtering developers, Valve wants to improve discovery. Next Fest shows games almost at random for the first two days, and wishlists alone don't boost your Steam visibility. People actually buying and playing your game does. Tom Giardino highlighted the shift in scale. Just three years ago, he was going around trying to convince developers to participate, saying, "There are only 50 or 100 games, so you should definitely join," but now the number of participating titles reaches into the thousands. He described it as "the pendulum swinging to the opposite side." "We don't think we're perfect and there's plenty of room for improvement," but added, "Rather than limiting developer access, making Steam a smarter and more dynamic platform is the starting point of our philosophy."

Kane Parsons, the director of Backrooms, revealed that he is currently working on three dream projects that he cannot speak about while wearing a Valve hoodie. He has said that the Portal games influenced some of his ideas in previous projects, and making a movie based on them is his ultimate dream project. Despite being only 21 years old, he visited Valve's office multiple times during the last year.