Artifact drops below 2,000 concurrent players for the first time

Valve’s Dota 2 card game has faced many difficulties since its launch. Recently, Artifact has achieved another sad record.

In the new year, Artifact set another sad new record. Valve’s card game Dota 2 keeps losing players and January 14 was the worst day ever. Artifact hit the record for the lowest number of concurrent players, from 4,116 on the same day to just 1,924. According to SteamCharts, the game has lost 52% of its players compared to the previous month.

These numbers are truly disturbing. Having only 2,000 to 4,000 players in a day is bad enough, but the fact that Artifact is still unstable with such a small number of players is even worse. Although the number of people leaving the game has not decreased as much as in early December, Artifact is in a dangerous situation when the peak player count after 2 months of launch is just under 4,000.

So what will Valve do? While the company promises to add major updates after the holiday, that has yet to happen. The only update we get is the in-game countdown, which pushes players to make faster decisions. The presence of a skill rating and leveling system only slightly increased the number of concurrent players and then decreased again.

That has raised concerns about how many people will be attending Artifact esports events this month. Several tournaments are already on the calendar for the month, starting with WePlay’s Agility. Agility is the next event after Strength Constructed – a tournament with many famous players and faces. This will also be the Artifact tournament with the largest prize pool: $15,000.

Then, later this month, the Artifact Bitcoin League will bring back Draft Mode tournaments, featuring the likes of: George “Hyped” Maganzini, Frederik “Hoej” Nielseon, Stanislav Cifka, Sean “swim” Huguenard, etc

Artifact has now entered its third month, Valve is trying hard to find answers to revive this game.