Valve took a step into the card game genre with Artifact. With such a successful company backing it, Artifact was expected to be a success on Steam. Now, it is practically dead and no one seems to care anymore.
Artifact celebrated its release on November 28, 2018. Although there was little advertising for it, many streamers in Germany saw a future in Artifact. Especially the fact that the creator of the famous card game Magic: The Gathering, Richard Garfield, worked on Artifact promised high quality.
A success on Twitch could have also meant a success in the community. But that didn’t happen.
Artifact – no players, no information
Twitter is silent: The developers revealed little about the game before the release of Artifact. Since its launch, things have only gotten quieter, until complete silence set in.
The last official tweet from the Twitter channel of Artifact was posted on December 21. The community has now been left in the dark for over a month about the state of the game, what is planned, and what could change.
And this despite the initial high interest in the game. There was an active community on reddit, and with the patch that changed some cards and introduced a kind of ranking system, players briefly returned. However, these players now feel abandoned.
This is how players react: The apparent lack of effort by Artifact to present itself and evolve is reflected in the reception. Since its release, the ratings have almost constantly fallen.
Currently (as of January 27), the recent reviews on Steam are “mostly negative” (35%). The biggest criticism is directed at the lack of game content and the random factor, which influences some matches too much.
This is also reflected in the player numbers. Shortly after the release, Artifact was no longer even in the top 70 of the most popular games on Steam. In the past week (as of January 27), the peak player count was below 3000 players at the same time. At the beginning of Artifact, over 60,000 players were playing simultaneously.
What is Artifact anyway?
Artifact is a card game set in the Dota 2 universe. The game is played on three game boards at the same time, known as “lanes.” The goal is to destroy two enemy towers or an ancient through heroes, creeps, and spells.
In addition to the three playing fields, what makes Artifact special is that cards can be actively bought and sold on the Steam marketplace. However, this quickly led to the most popular card costing more than the game itself. What the future holds for Artifact is uncertain.
Cortyn has been of the opinion from the very beginning that Artifact will fail:
