Hi
This is an appeal to the Exile mod team to please re-review your position on sharing your content through Steam Workshop. That you've achieved so much without being on Steam is a true testament to the quality of your product, but there's a significant portion of the current and future player base that is vital to the longevity of the game that will never get to experience it. The click-to-play playerbase is vital to all server owners. We enter the Arma arena for the long haul, for our current micro communities, the health of our future communities, and the pleasure of players just passing through. Unfortunately, through supporting Exile, our servers are permanently leashed to a fraction of the Arma 3 playerbase by your current model.
~90%(+) of all players trying to access our servers are unable to join due to not having Exile mod. We get great traffic via various channels all the way up to knocking on the door but they just can't get in, after downloading Gb's of other mods. The "what-could-have-been" player base is not a disposable player base. It's a very significant one. Our communities are not sustainable with such low connection success rates, and the energy required to promote and re-promote becomes difficult to find. Without the server owners and the health of their communities and passing players, what has anyone really got long term?
Please can you do us the service of getting together to discuss and review your position again, with a blank sheet of paper? It's clear you quite rightly take the decision making process very seriously, as we did when we selected Exile to be part of our package, but time has passed since we all made those decisions and we're all able to review how the game has progressed and what shape the community is in. As server owners, we'd really benefit from knowing what our future might look like so we can plan.
The above is in no way intended as a criticism of any part of your work. We love the mod, and are so grateful to see your ongoing energy and dedication to it. This is just about the void in connectivity that impacts all of us. We all want the successes for you too.
Very best regards, Matt
