In short:
I would suggest that Ryzom was available on Desura.Reasoning:
Promoting Ryzom on Desura would get new users from both Windows and GNU/Linux (as well as Mac OS X in the future). While it does not have a userbase as big as Steam yet, it has a very vibrant community and games on it are easier to find (also the client is cleaner and less resource hungry).Ideally, of course, since Ryzom is licensed under AGPLv3, it would have been perfect for GNU/Linux users to have their distributions handle the packaging and versioning of it. But for technical reasons in how the client works (it updates itself with binary patches), this would be quite tricky.
But as a binary distribution system, Desura (similar to Steam) is a very good alternative to the package managers of GNU/Linux distributions and keeping the updating in hands of the Ryzom team — making a very much a cleaner installation from the users/administrators point of view and keeping it simple for Ryzom devs.
As the Desura client will also be released as free software (under GPLv3 it seems), it has a great potential to be included in GNU/Linux distributions' official repositories. Thus making the tool to find, install and maintain Ryzom, available out of the box to the average GNU/Linux user.
With these points combined, I dare argue that by publishing Ryzom on Desura would get more users, since it would be:
- easier to find,
- easier to install, and
- easier to maintain.