The DOTA card game Artifact has been almost completely written off by both fans and developers. However, the category of the game is booming on Twitch. This is not due to Artifact, but to trolls.
This is how Artifact is being trolled: The streams running under ‘Artifact’ are currently showing no gameplay of the card game at all. Instead, trolls have taken up residence there, showing various inappropriate content such as:
- Porn
- illegal movie streams
- terror videos like the attack on Christchurch
- or just completely different games disguised as “Artifact DLC” or “Artifact coming later”
The streams ran for several minutes or even hours before Twitch eventually banned them.
What measures is Twitch taking? The flood of trolls, who apparently even created new channels automatically, kept Twitch on its toes for a while.
Many channels have already been banned and there are new bans all the time, but due to the automation, an effective response was probably difficult. There was a response on Twitter:
We are urgently working to remove the offending content and suspend the relevant accounts.
In addition, new Twitch users have temporarily been denied the ability to stream. Those new to the platform are temporarily not allowed to open their own stream channel to show games.
How many viewers does Artifact have right now? In the past seven days, the “Artifact” category on Twitch has recorded a peak of over 16,000 viewers simultaneously (as of May 29).
This is the highest since January 2019, when the game was supposed to be saved with a new update. Since the release in November 2018, Artifact has been steadily losing viewers. Recently, right before the boom, an average of between 20 and 30 people were watching.
What happened to Artifact
Artifact was supposed to be the new hit for the gaming giant Valve. After success stories like DOTA2 and Hearthstone, the idea was probably close at hand. Even the creator of Magic: The Gathering, Richard Garfield, was involved. However, success for Artifact did not materialize.
After a disastrous launch and significant criticism of the pricing and patch policies, it went quiet on the developers’ front. The Twitter channel was dead for weeks and players felt abandoned, which soon led to the game’s demise.
In a recent announcement from March 2019 Valve finally spoke up. They intend to use the knowledge gained from Artifact for new games. This sounded bad for the future of Artifact.
For the internet community, Valve and especially Artifact became a laughingstock for a while. And apparently so severely that even now, trolling is still happening on Twitch.
