Valve was nearly bought out by EA for $1 billion Newell said that Valve would sooner “disintegrate” than sell out to a major publisher. So with the bitter rivals EA and Valve you can safely say that the C&C franchise will not be going out on Steam any time soon.
But if Valve bought EA out (which it could happen) then you would get the C&C franchise on Steam.
If you stick to W3D instead of UDK then yes you are limiting yourself to a type of audience. I'd just stick with the W3D and make the most of it. Yes it would be amazing for it to be on Steam....that's if WestWood was around, then it would be attracting a larger audience.
If you want to blame something blame EA for stopping the C&C franchise from being more popular.
"In 2011, Electronic Arts, or EA, released its competitor to Steam, by the moniker Origin. From the beginning, gamers didn't like it. Not only were they used to using Steam, they were skeptical of anything with EA’s name on it. Though EA’s games are popular, their business practices are not. EA is always in the running for the worst company in America by the Consumerist and even “won” in 2012, the first full year of Origin’s release. They have a reputation for mistreating their customers with invasive anti-piracy policies and greedy pricing schemes that nickel and dime people into paying for content they should have received in the first place. EA, aware that most customers would prefer to deal with Valve, decided to cease selling their new games on Steam. If people wanted to play their PC games, they’d need to play it on Origin, or not at all."
Keep up with the good work and I will support you guys all the way!