Valve is a company we like to associate with success since it has many extremely popular titles behind its back like Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, CS:GO, Dota 2, and Portal 2. When it comes to flops, though, we can barely think of any except for Artifact. The game became Valve’s biggest failure up to date but it looks like it’s not all over yet.
In case you’ve forgotten, Artifact still exists and Valve are here to remind us of that fact.
How it all started
The game was first teased during The International 2017 (the biggest Dota 2 event for the year) and the reactions really spoke for themselves.
Why that reaction, you might ask? Back in 2017 and even today, there’s plenty of card games to go around – Hearthstone, Gwent, Magic: The Gathering, Faeria and more. Valve’s Artifact wanted to offer a different approach to the genre by combining elements from Dota 2 and increasing the number of playable boards from the singular one we’ve seen in the other titles to a total of 3.
The creator of Magic: The Gathering Richard Garfield was also heavily involved during the game’s development and despite the initial reaction, things looked really good.
Problematic, to say the least
Artifact had some other issues, though, like not being free to play. That was a huge downside as all its rivals followed the F2P formula. Artifact required players to pay upfront for their deck and every other booster pack was also bought with real money.
This was fixed to an extent with some of the future updates the game received, as they added options to get in-game points which could then be used to purchase packs. Otherwise, if you wanted a certain card, you’d often find it on the Steam market itself. This was also advertised as one of Artifact’s strong sides, as the game would have been truly a digital “trading” card game. Sadly, it didn’t live long enough to see such fame.
Artifact was released on November 28, 2018, and it enjoyed a high initial interest, with peak numbers reaching 46,000 players. Certain streamers were entirely focused on it and some even considered it as a new career opportunity. We saw a couple of low-level tournaments that didn’t exactly thrive in viewership. Even before the game’s launch, Valve promised players a $1,000,000 event later in 2018.
Circling the drain
Needless to say, that event never came to be and that was probably the smart thing to do. Just a couple of months into the year, barely anyone was playing Artifact, with numbers being in the lower hundreds. This trend kept going and rings true even today.
The game’s last post on Twitter came in March 2019 and it basically said that the team behind Artifact will be reworking the title in order to fix the mistakes that plagued it.
Towards A Better Artifacthttps://t.co/AsMgRdMonN
— Artifact (@PlayArtifact) March 29, 2019
A new beginning?
Ever since then, we’ve had radio silence a steadily low number of dedicated players who still seem to enjoy the game. That was until March 20, when the Artifact Twitter became active again, almost exactly a year later.
Artifact: Under Constructionhttps://t.co/QvJaieH5gf
— Artifact (@PlayArtifact) March 20, 2020
The tweet led to the official Artifact website where we can find the following statement:
First off, we wanted to say thanks for all of your tweets, emails and posts. The continued interest in Artifact has been encouraging, and we sincerely appreciate all of the feedback!You might notice some changes soon – we are starting tests on our systems and infrastructure. This shouldn’t impact live Artifact but we wanted to give you a heads up.Expect more news after the launch of Half-Life: Alyx!
Half-Life: Alyx launched yesterday, so we’re all awaiting more news at this point. It’s curious what the development team has done to address the game’s problems. Richard Garfield isn’t part of it anymore as he left after the title’s launch in 2018. Will Artifact finally be the game players wanted it to be? Will it challenge its rival card games? Will it be another flop? In any case, we were promised news, so stay tuned for further updates.For more gaming news check out our Gaming section.
