Artifact Players are Abandoning Ship

Valve's first new game in years turned out to be a flop.

Artifact, Valve's Dota Card Game, is sinking before our eyes. According to Steam Charts, the average number of gamer playing the title at the same time in the last 30 days was 708. Yesterday, at the hottest moment of the day, there were 683 people playing. This is a tragic result, especially for a developer accustomed to completely different results. If this decline pace keeps up, the players will soon start having problems with finding people willing to play.

Let us remind you that the game debuted on November 28, last year. Initially, fans of card games decided to give the game a chance. According to Steam Spy's estimates 955 thousand people bought the game within the first week after Artifact's release. The same source states that to this day the games total sales reached 1.3 million copies. Valve managed to convince many players to part with their money, but then the project wasn't able to keep their interest.

Artifact quickly began to lose players. Immediately after launch, there were 60 thousand people playing the title at the same time. In mid-December this number fell below 15 thousand, and in January it was only 2.8 thousand. The production clearly did not won the sympathy of Steam users, where only half of the player reviews are positive.

With the game's community shrinking at an alarming rate, Valve may soon be forced to switch to the free-to-play model. However, even this will only ensure a short-term increase in the number of players if the devs are unable to make Artifact worthwile in the eyes of the players.

The current situation also raises doubts as to the fate of the planned iOS and Android versions. A lot of time has passed since Valve mentioned the mobile releases, so it's hard to say what's going on with them now.

1. Artifact official website
2. Artifact game guide