[elmokki]

I'm not really sold with CoE3 at all due to it looking like it'll be far too simple, especially in terms of combat, but seriously, if you release your game in Steam/Desura you can still sell it on your own website and those two services, especially Steam allow a much larger audience.

Dominions 3 scene is small and slowly dying. If the game was a 5 euro/dollar sale game in Steam for the holiday seasons, you can bet there would be many new people trying it out. Right now the price is so ludicrously high and there's absolutely no visibility for the game that influx of new players is far lower than what it could be.

I believe that it'd be a terrible business decision for Illwinter guys to release CoE3 like Dominions 3. Having the game easily accessible with a cheap price of maximum of about 20 dollars / euros makes people buy it just because they are interested and it's cheap.

If on the way to get the game is to buy it for closer 50 euros / dollars from some fairly obscure web site, you won't get that many random people buying it after just trying the demo. After all, for 50 euros you can get a big distributor main stream game. Sure, that game could be worse, but people do regardless seem to feel like that game is worth more - and in economical terms the price is more justified since the production costs are probably hundredfold or even thousandfold.

Also underestimating the marketing potential of those distribution platforms, especially Steam since it's by far the largest, is not a good idea.

So, really, I see no logical arguments against at least asking what it would take to get the game published on Desura/Steam/Gamersgate/Whatever.