Seriously, why not? Sony's already joined with Everquest, and so has Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, and Eve Online. Blizzard has nothing to lose and is sure to get plenty of new customers, especially if there's some special introductory offer from Steam. Not only that, they'd make a killing of of their back catalogue too (Warcraft and Diablo Pack anybody?). What are they waiting for?

Blizzard likes making fucktons of money and they can make ever more fucktons of money with their proprietary store that they don't have to share with Valve?

Given that Battle.net exists, and they are integrating it as one user account for all their new gen stuff (WoW, D3, and SC2)...I don't think that would be a good idea.

Blizzard also already has their own digital distribution system for their games and it works pretty well.  They even let you put in your cd keys from any of their games and download it from their website whenever you want.

"Blizzard likes making fucktons of money and they can make ever more fucktons of money with their proprietary store that they don't have to share with Valve?"

I have my doubts (I speak this as an outsider as if I actually had any internal knowledge of discussions of this subject, I couldn't say anything), considering they're using their own Blizzard Downloader service.

See http://www.blizzard.com/store/browse.xml?f=c:1,c:7

And yet World of Warcraft, a single game that costs numerous upfront fees plus $15 a month to play, has a little over half the subscription numbers of Steam, plus Starcraft and Diablo are huge brands in their own right.  Blizzard is as ubiquitous with PC gaming as it gets; they're doing just fine without partnering with a retail partner, so why would they do so and have to share the profits instead of sell it themselves, get all the profits, and do just fine?

Is Ubisoft or EA any smaller of a company than Blizzard? No, in fact they're bigger, yet they've joined Steam. Clearly the sales increases more than justify any commission Steam charges. They're doing fine, but they'd do even better by partnering with Steam. I don't see how introducing themselves to an audience of millions could possibly hurt them. Not everybody plays WoW on the PC, and many people have missed out on Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. Sales, especially software sales, benefit the most from number of sales rather than raw profit on each individual one. They could have a customer pay 90% of what they charge on the blizzard store, or have a customer simply not buy or not know about the product at all, which one is better?

I like independent blizzard, thank you.

I'd rather not be forced to use Steam any more than necessary.

Geno, I don't understand why you continue to argue from the position that Blizzard would get this huge boost in sales because people would be re-introduced to Blizzard products.  Blizzard games, be they WoW or the Battle Chests, sell gangbusters every month, and sales always spike every time Blizzard does something new.  Blizzard games are cultural touchstones.  Just a few weeks ago, my roommate, who pretty much only plays NBA Live and GTA knock-offs, got into a conversation with me about how great Starcraft was back in the day, and was absolutely elated when I downloaded Brood War from my Blizzard account for him.  Steam, as a service, gets no advertising through any traditional means, and has only become so huge through word of mouth and from being packaged with a few retail games.  What I'm getting at is, I think the Steam community is far more educated and far more hardcore than your average console owner, and I'm willing to bet that 99.99% of all Steam users have had some experience with a Blizzard game, being it owning one, playing one, or hearing of one.  Blizzard is that prolific; far more prolific and culturally relevant than something like Steam.

Blizzard is not independent anymore, see Activision-Blizzard. Activision titles do get on Steam, so it's plausible. But no, Blizzard has no need for Valve's prestige among PC gamers. They hold the same power if not more, and could probably make their own distribution platform and compete with Steam head to head if that's what they were into instead of making and providing their own games. If you just want to download their offered titles, you can do that, and without the need for a launcher. Why do you want to have the launcher? As for their future games, their Battle.net updates will ensure it's as useful, if not more so, as Steam when it comes to friend lists, match making or whatever else.

Because Blizzard doesn't need to, though it would be pretty awesome if they put up some Diablo and Warcraft.

Blizzard is launching the new Battle.net application when StarCraft II launches, which I believe we all should assume will be a Steam competitor.