Some things that Steam COULD bring to the table

[Fearfactor]

You kidding me?? I'm supposed to get excited about steam because I might get an achievement award for landing or getting a kill?? That's not a big enough deal to convince me to get steam. There's really no advantage to steam, despite what people say. Don't need it for a community. IL2 had plenty of "community" in many online forums and you could "match make" with friends you met on those forums. Don't need it to play online. Don't need it get auto updates, I can install patches and such manually, thank you. Nor does COD need steam for "exposure" or to attract newcomers. IL2 certainly didn't, it got plenty of players and exposure well before Steam ever existed. Don't need Steam for making easy backups. I have made backup copies of IL2 for years and it's not that difficult!! So no advantage there either. Steam or it's DRM will not prevent anyone from cracking or hacking it, never has for any other Steam game so far, as I have researched about this. So no advantage there either.

So what you DO have with Steam is a impediment bad enough for many of us to refuse to buy the game at all. So it would be far better for 1C to offer it no steam. Even for those that love steam, if it were to be offered with without steam they would still buy the game. There simply would be nobody refusing to buy it because it was NOT on steam!

But offering it steam only apparently will stop about 25% of the people otherwise interested in the game from buying it at all. And a stubborn lot we are. Don't expect many of us to cave and later buy the sim unless the steam thing is dropped or a way comes up later to thwart the steam.