How can Steam Improve Further?

PC Gaming is in a dark place.  Compared to the halcyon days of the 90s, PC gamers don't have much to be excited about.
There are shining beacons of hope, though, and Valve has been king the past decade, through unequaled support of the PC platform with their own games, and especially Steam.

Steam is easily the most solid market for PC titles- it's community and security a welcomed shelter for developers.  But it's not perfect, and PC game piracy shows no sign of slowing.  What's missing?

While my own feelings about piracy will be written about in a later post, there's no way to discuss PC gaming without mentioning piracy.  Outside of the fruitless battle against the almighty FREE SHIT, what opportunity is there to interest gamers in a monetary investment in PC titles that can easily be found free, everywhere?

Valve has the answer, or at least the seed, in their Steam service.  A few years ago, I bought the Orange Box on sale for the silly low price at the time of $20.  I had already bought it for the Xbox360, because at the time of release I had an older computer that really started to show it's age the time Episode One hit.  The 360 version, though, was handicapped by Microsoft's draconian pricing and update rules, which hindered Valve's typically fantastic support of titles.

So after purchasing the Orange Box through Steam for my shiny new PC, I was told that since I already had a copy of Half-Life 2 on my account, I could gift another user a copy.  It was a fantastic feeling, not only to introduce a friend to such a great game, but to have that kind of control over a purchase.  When all other companies want to try and limit the number of installs in the most frustrating, irritating way possible, Valve basically allowed me to pass a free copy of a top title to someone with no restrictions other than my friend needed Steam.

How could this be developed into something that will inspire people to invest actual money into such an easily pirated format?
The answer is used game sales- something unheard of for pc gaming, but obviously an unstoppable behemoth in the console business.  The idea that, if I choose, I can take a game I don't play, or outright don't like, and put that towards a new purchase, is almost as appealing as Free.
PC gaming has been held back by this from the beginning.  It's an inherently broken system, whereas you would be able to purchase a PC game, copy it in 10 minutes, and return it for something else, rinse and repeat.  No business is going to go down that path.

Valve could, though.  My purchases through Steam, even with the option of backing up a game to a physical format, is still tied to Steam.  While Steam games have been cracked, and pirated, those copies are still not part of Steam's service- there won't be any multiplayer access, no re-downloading the game from Steam's service, and no community for that game.  It's like flashing an Xbox360 to play pirated games- you're instantly cut-off from Xbox Live, thereby halving the reason to even own a 360.

What could Steam do?  Lets say I've played the hell out of a game I purchased through Steam.  I beat it, replayed what I wanted, played the multiplayer.  For a console game, I'd then weigh the pluses and negatives for trading the game in for something else.  Steam would be very capable of offering up their own Used Game Marketplace, with their own Steam Currency.  Potentially, they could "buy back" your game, and give you credits toward another game on Steam.  Maybe a friend pays a set amount of credits for my copy to become their copy.  Steam then removes that game from my library, and I find something new using the credits.  It wouldn't be a 1:1 pricing scale- afterall, I had my fun with the game, but it would be something given back to the gamer, entirely in Steam's environment, that guarantees future purchases.

Maybe I was a little put off by the Duke Nukem Forever demo, and now that Russian/English copy is floating around, waiting to be downloaded.  It can be purchased (or pre-purchased at this point) for $45, not a bad price, but not the price of free I could also get.  If I had some credits to my Steam account, I may be looking at a $20-$30 purchase- much more acceptable for even a jaded gamer such as myself, with the added benefits of Steam's strong community for multiplayer, and downloads that exceed the speed of any web file downloading service.

I pay for convenience, speed, support, and the idea that when I'm finished I can turn that product around towards something else is much more appealing than a back-catalogue of games I don't even care to re-download.  Steam could do this, in a relatively safe venue for customers, and I can't imagine any gamer could look at that negatively.