lol...
I haven't really been around here for a while (not posting at least), but this thread made me want to say a few things.
First, I see some people seem to have a few misconceptions about how Steam works, for example,
games bought on Steam can be backed up and played offline, you have to have Steam on while playing, but it doesn't need to BE online. Obviously, there are some games that need to stay always connected, but those are mostly online multiplayer games.
Also, I'm
assuming Kunos will want to use the Workshop to handle AC's mods, and to me that would be the perfect deal, people who never used the Workshop for any Steam game probably doesn't understand how much easier it makes your life when getting mods, I'll use 2 games to exemplify what I'm saying:
ArmA 3: This game is also Steam exclusive(and interestingly enough was also bashed for being Steam exclusive), but for now still isn't on the Workshop, so to install mods on it I have to go to external sites and search for mods to download, and then install, this isn't so bad, except when you have 50+ mods installed things start to get difficult to take care off, and then tracking down the mods that were updated and replacing the right files can be very annoying.
Gmod: This is also Steam exclusive, but uses the Workshop to its full extent, in Gmod I have like... 200 mods installed, or more, and they were quite easily installed and auto update whenever a new version of the mods is uploaded, in this game you can browse the Workshop from inside the game and once you find a mod you like, you click on "subscribe" and the mod downloads and installs itself while you are ingame, doesn't even need to restart, also from inside the game you can disable or enable mods at will to check for incompatibility problems or bugs, etc, and also you can uninstall them by just clicking on "unsubscribe".
If there is a single reason to defend AC being on Steam only, it is the Workshop, it just makes dealing with mods that much better. However, I'm not saying Steam is perfect, ironically enough, I HATE IT more often than not, but I can see its advantages too.
Also, about some of the comments in this thread, I find funny how the same people that, last week, considered Kunos and AC the second coming of Jesus, are now considering them to be greedy monsters that should burn in Hell, just because they took the most
RATIONAL decision. (A bit exaggerated, but you get the idea.
)
And sorry for the wall of text, I just wanted to give my take on this.