Valve's Artifact Continues to Lose Players Only 2 Months After Launch

When it was revealed, Artifact had a lot of promise for becoming the next big card game. Using the popular Dota universe as an edifice many were exciting to see Valve returning to game development but it seems that the game isn't doing well.

First reported by Gaming LYF, 2 months after launching the player count for Artifact has been dropping quickly. According to Steam Charts the game peak at around 60K players when it launched but in the past 24 hours the game has had a concurrent player count of 3-4K. This is a massive drop and after only 2 months this could spell doom for the game.

There could be a lot of reasons for this, such as the game costing $19.99 whereas card games are generally free-to-play, like Blizzard's Hearthstone. It could also be the oversaturation of the market with Bethesda, CD Projekt RED, and recently Bandai Namco jumping into the card game arena. Artifact could bounce back as titles such as Rainbow Six Siege and For Honor has gained a sizable audience over time when starting off with a meager amount. However, unlike those games which have specific mechanics unique to that game the card game genre is much harder to regain footing. 

Artifact is out now on PC, Mac, and Linux.

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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