Protest from
Sim-Fans - exactly.
But that is the point: The only way to survive in this Niche market is to attract new players. And aiming only at the flight-sim-experienced crowd is surely the wrong way.
And then something else strikes the reader of the blog, as it was also put by one user:
If somebody claims to be a fullhearted flighstim-fan who will overcome any obstacle to fly flightsims, even fiddle around with PCs enough to install patches, addons, make skins, mods, etc and then says that he won't buy the game, because it has an online account (as most other games released now), he's simply undermining his own credibility.
If somebody has no internet, that is a different matter, but most of the people complaining do so, because it's released via STEAM.
And besides the points you posted, it's rather a question what benefits it brings for the developer. STEAM offers GameContent to be bought and added (instead of addons released like IL2), reliable cheat protection, it also saves a lot of money and it makes the current DRMs of a limited number of installations obsolete:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=22866