BlackAlpha

That's the thing that perplexes me about this whole thing. Why beat around the bush? Why hasn't Battlefront done more research into this whole thing and actually tried to sell something on Steam to see what's up?  
 
I just can't take the whole "Steam is death" argument seriously...

Yeah, so I keep getting the impression from you that you guys never seriously looked into it! Why not do some serious research and figure out what exactly the pros and cons are? You might change your mind!
 
   
Either more people will buy it than they would've using your store and you will make a profit, or you won't make a profit and you'll pull the game from the store.

Or maybe it's a Wargame on the opposite end of the realism spectrum? As in, it's a not so super realistic wargame but still a wargame?
 
I think that who you advertise for does not necessarily dictate what sort of game you got. Look at Arma for example. They got a pretty hardcore military FPS simulator that is excellent for communities who play coop in a realistic fashion and it's a game that doesn't follow the usual FPS game rules. Yet, the devs advertised it for the mainstream FPS crowd and were very successful (at the moment, they are still 12th on the top sellers list on Steam and have been pretty high up like that for a long time, when the game released they were in the top 5 for a long time), and they advertised the crap out of it. I guess they received a lot of new fans that way. But I still wouldn't call it a regular FPS game that appeals to the mainstream. It's not another Battlefield, many people who enjoy Battlefield hate Arma. No matter who it is advertised for, it's still very much a hardcore military simulator, with mods that make it so you have to eat MREs every few hours, which tells you something about the community that plays the game.

With "more" I didn't mean you have to make more money with Steam than you currently do. I meant, you have to make some sort of profit, and then you can still decide to cancel the Steam project. It's not like you have to abandon everything you currently have and go exclusively for Steam. And it's also not like you have to forever use Steam. Steam is not some kind of high risk project since you already have a way to get income that will work just fine in tandem with Steam for at least a few years if you do decide to try out Steam. In everything you said (including from a few other threads), I don't see how a Steam release will compromise the infrastructure and it's income on Battlefront.com.
 
Edit: One of the many things you can do is for example, you can up the price on Steam, link to your own website and tell people they can get it there cheaper.

Steam can't be compared to Apple, Google or Amazon. Apples and oranges. It's a very bad comparison.
 
 
 
That's 22 years without any Steam experience. What about the people who do have Steam experience? Many game developers said that, on the PC, they can't become successful without being on Steam. Quite a few niche game publishers went to Steam and have been quite active there for quite a while now. Why do you think that is? Because these days, that's where virtually the entire PC game market is at - from casual gamers to hardcore wargamers who play niche games.
   
Doing what you are doing now also hurts your chances to stay in business. You are now that guy who is telling others to stay retail and not innovate. The difference is, 15 or so years ago, you were the innovator, but now, you are the laggard, who is still clinging to the old, supposedly safe ways, and being so sure that he made the right choice to stay retail.

No, you are allowed to say that you don't want this game to end up on Steam, like you did. The thing that you shouldn't do, is tell people to stop discussing it because you grew tired of the discussion. That is just very rude. Or like some other people did, blatantly insult people who share a different opinion than yours. That is extremely rude.

Snarky comments can still contribute to something productive in a discussion (it's a valid way of doing an argument and some people only know how to argue in that manner, so you need to excuse them). On the other hand, trying to shut down a discussion (for everyone) is counter productive.
 
To clarify, with the rude comments remark I made to your reply, I really meant other people who went a bit overboard, not you.
 
 
   
It's not just that, though. People can have different kind of goals. For example, they might be trying to change not the opinion of the person they are arguing with, but instead, trying to change the opinion of an outsider (somebody who is listening), like other people on this forum who are reading this discussion or the developers, which then can lead to a variety of different things happening.

No, you are allowed to say that you don't want this game to end up on Steam, like you did. The thing that you shouldn't do, is tell people to stop discussing it because you grew tired of the discussion. That is just very rude. Or like some other people did, blatantly insult people who share a different opinion than yours. That is extremely rude.