BF3 should be on Steam, not putting it on steam is simply EA being dicks about it, and not striking an appropriate deal with Valve.
Anyway I bet there's a story to this, and all we can do is speculate at this point.
BF3 unfortunately is good enough that I'm going to buy it.. I've already spent so much money through Steam that I would like to keep all of my games in one place
The crap thing is, I may end up having to pick this up via Origin... *barF*