Valve's artifact game hits a mysterious spike in player count

Summary

  • Artifact has mysteriously gained 12,000 players, a significant increase from its usual number.

  • The surge in player numbers began on December 31st and raised suspicions of possible bot activity or piracy.

  • The player base remains confused by the sudden increase as this is not the first time Artifact has experienced unexplained increases.

For some mysterious reason, Valve artifact The card battle game saw a sudden surge in player numbers, rising to nearly 12,000 players before disappearing within a day. artifact is a game first released in 2018 and is a card game set in the Dota 2 Universe. This game in particular is known for having an incredibly mixed reception upon its reveal, with many believing that Valve was following the trend set by Blizzard Hearthstone. The disappointment and mild excitement of the game turned to hostility artifactThe pricing and monetization models were also revealed.

artifact was seemingly abandoned almost a few months after its release and went without updates for a full year. Valve announced a redesign of the game in the form of Artifact 2.0but these plans also failed. As such, Artifact 2.0's cancellation resulted in it becoming completely free to play and the old version of the game becoming a completely free game Artifact Classic and the converted toy Artifact Foundrywithout further development plans. While the game saw a brief spike in player numbers in 2021 after becoming free-to-play, the title is effectively dead. For some reason, the defunct game recently saw a sudden spike in player numbers.

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Based on some data from SteamDB, artifact reached over 12,000 players as of January 1, 2025, a big step forward since the game averages just over 100 players most days. The sudden surge in players appears to have started on December 31st, going from 400 to suddenly 4,000 players within an hour. However, the number doesn't quite reach the game's peak concurrent player count of over 60,000 artifactWhen it was first released, it was a strange phenomenon that the number of the title suddenly skyrocketed.

The artifact's sudden “popularity” explained

Mostly that artifact The player base is mostly confused as to how and why this defunct game suddenly had 12,000 players. artifactThe surge since the free-to-play game's launch in 2021 has barely cracked over 1000 concurrent players; Creating 12,000 out of nowhere in two days is certainly strange. The fact that this momentum crashed and fell back to the 150 average is also suspicious.

This isn't the first time artifact has seen a sudden spike in players in 2024, like the one that occurred on December 14th. The number of players shot up to 14,000, stayed at that number for a few days and then went back down again on the 17th. The artifact The gaming community isn't sure what caused the sudden increase in player numbers, although many suspect it could be due to scam bots increasing their playtime to make their Steam account appear legitimate. While the other theory involves playing pirated versions of video games, the answer to this question goes something like this artifact is still a mystery.

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