Artifact is an anomaly of a video game. The digital deckbuilder/CCG is proof Valve is not infallible. Even the legendary studio behind Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and other very successful and popular games can make mistakes. That's why Valve announced this past week that Artifact was ceasing development and its 2.0 reboot would not be unfinished. It's also why, despite Valve admitting it faltered, Artifact is now seeing a level of popularity it hasn't seen in a very long time.

To be clear, Artifact seeing a spike of popularity does not mean that it's suddenly popular. It's just evidence that Valve's announcement has led to some renewed interest in the game. According to scraped Steam data, Artifact saw a peak of over 1,100 concurrent players following its development ending and it going free-to-play. That's the highest total and sustained concurrent players that Artifact has seen since early 2019.

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For some perspective on the matter, in the six months prior to the announcement Artifact saw an average concurrent player count below 40. Further, it hasn't seen an average of over 100 concurrent players since 2019. That low player count is likely why Valve reevaluated its plan to rerelease Artifact and continue the game's development. It's not necessarily realistic to believe a currently playable game with just an average of 30 players can climb back to numbers where it'd be profitable.

Artifact did have a much higher peak of concurrent players when it originally launched, of course. Its initial player count was above 60,000 concurrent players. That number did rapidly decrease, but it represents Artifact's potential. With that number in mind, it's understandable why Valve gave Artifact a chance to be rebooted in the first place. If Valve could regain those numbers, then Artifact's reboot would be justified. But reaching those numbers seemed less and less realistic over time.

As interesting as it is that Artifact's player count jumped over a thousand, it's also probably not a number that's too exciting to Valve. In other words, it's further evidence that rebooting Artifact wouldn't be successful enough. If this thousand-player jump is as high as it's going to go, then Artifact's long-term future even as a free-to-play game isn't secure.

Those who have played and enjoyed Artifact are left wondering just what went wrong. Whether it's Artifact's up-front cost and microtransactions, or the game's gameplay being impenetrable to new players, Artifact never even got a chance to be a big success. At the very least, fans can play the game now once more before the playerbase likely starts to fade again.

Artifact is available now on PC.

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Source: SteamCharts