Artifact is the latest game developed by Valve but it’s not what you think it is. Artifact is a digital collectible card game and it brings online competitive battles across boards called lanes. This Artifact game is based on the universe of Dota 2. Despite all that, the game has been struggling since release and we think that it’s going to be free to play soon.
Artifact is struggling to keep the players interested as there’s a steep decline seen among the total concurrent players on Steam Charts. Artifact officially launched on November 28. After two days we saw the highest amount of concurrent players that is 60,740 players. Though the game didn’t stay on top in Steam’s top five list for a long time.
This high number of concurrent players was due to it being Valve’s new game after years. People trusted Valve but they are now mostly disappointed. Everyone was excited to try out the new game that Valve has been working on from years.
So after a few days, players lost interest in the game. In the last 24 hours, the highest number of concurrent players on Artifact was 11,596 players. At the time of writing, there are 8,385 players currently playing the game.
Now that’s not all as the overall response to the game has not been great. If you check on Steam, it has mixed ratings and most people are complaining about how hard and expensive it is to play it.
The worst thing is how much the cards cost in the game. In fact, the most expensive card in the game costs the same as the game which shouldn’t be the case. Basically, it’s not a game you can have fun inside without spending money at all.
We are sure that Valve is not happy either with the results. To bring the players back, Valve surely has to bring a lot of changes and improvements to the game. Valve can attract more players to Artifact by having a free to play weekend or by just making it free to play.
The game is still among the top selling 20 games on Steam but currently looks like it’s not going to survive for long.
As for how well this free to play formula? We recently saw Valve doing the same thing with their insanely popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Counter-Strike Global Offensive is now free to play and not only that, it also brings the battle royale mode to keep things interesting.
Due to this change, CS:GO now has the highest amount of players in the last two years. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has now the highest number of concurrent players since the last January which is a big improvement.
Now they could do the same thing with their newly released card game to bring more players to try it. If not, Valve has to listen to the community feedback to make changes to the game. First of all, they will have to lower the insanely high prices of cards in the game which takes away all the fun.
