lol, I'm just going by what I've seen so far with other indie developers.
Tripwire Interactive's Killing Floor - Tripware themselves have stated they would be no where without steam. Because of Steam, pretty much any PC Gamer I've seen knows about this game.
Arcen Games' AI War: Fleet Command - x4000, the head developer's codename, has now sold thousands of copies of AI War, released an expansion and the recent Puzzle game Tidalis. He started from scratch. Now, largely because of the grown popularity on Steam, he now pays his salary including his team, and even recently hired a graphics artist.
Oh, and after this:
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/4696/
Battlefront has no excuse not to let you put EoS on Steam.