It's a good move from everybody involved, but Valve will have to watch it closely or else it may become a real problem like we've seen with review sites that were forced to give good scores to certain games in order to keep recieving copies of their games.

And quite frankly, given how bad has Valve managed the whole Greenlight/Direct side of Steam, I'm not sure they'll manage to keep this part under control.

Quick noob questions. What the hell do curators do?

Valve seems to be doing a ton of work to protect developers/publishers it seems... This in conjunction with trying to mitigate review bombing is a testament to that fact.

They curate.
Think of them as a manager/overseer of museum pieces but apply that to video games.

I think they are doing it because Steam is experiencing the same problems with other online games marketplaces - there are so many games out there, that soon nobody's making any money. Valve either needs to kill Steam on create a workaround.

Oh what are they actually overseeing?  They preserving mods or something?

Uh. Do they really do anything other than recommend products on Steam?

If that's the case then I should try to become one.  Just look at this eloquent review I just recently posted for Plants Vs. Zombies GOTY edition on Steam.

"Best dollar I have ever spent besides maybe that one time at a strip club."

I probably should have made that analogy a little better.

Think of Museum pieces as video games, curators take inventory on what's available, and gather the museum pieces that they enjoy and put them on display for the world to see.

Some will take mods into account.

Some do, some don't.

I know some do, but can they do so on Steam, in association with their Curator role? At least I'm not aware of anything like that.

Read that sentence again and try not to laugh. The only thing Valve will ever watch closely is their money vault.