Artifact Classic News

Artifact saw a mysterious player count jump over new year, six years after Valve’s trading card game died off

Last June, Valve’s trading card game Artifact Classic peaked at 78 players. November was a little rosier for the abandoned multiplayer game, with a monthly peak of 1,028. Then, on New Year’s Day, that number jumped to 11,900 players on Steam - its second highest concurrent besides launch. Soon after, they vanished. Who were these mysterious shufflers, flocking to the deserted, echoing halls of Valve’s disastrous flop like your mate who uses the word ‘liminal’ too much to a dead shopping center? Forbes, who first reported on the phenomena, don’t know. No one knows. Somebody might actually know but writing ‘no one knows’ makes it more dramatic. Let’s dig in.

Once upon a time there was a card game called Artifact, created by Steam, Half-Life, and Dota juggernaut Valve. This title never performed particularly well, being beset by issues on all sides running the gamut from its approach to monetization to players simply being baffled by its existence. Eventually, all work on the title ceased, it was set as free to play - and that's where the story ended.

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Valve's abandoned card game suddenly experiences a surge in players

Here's a news story I didn't expect to be writing today, or to be honest - any day. Artifact appears to be back. Valve's forgotten card game was last updated in 2021 and despite being free to play like Hearthstone, its player numbers have sunk well below triple digits. That's all just changed with a huge player surge putting the game in a far healthier state, but it may not be entirely real.

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NFT games will be every bit as successful as Artifact

It's seems like it's impossible to have avoided hearing about them, and if you have then I envy you. NFTs are "an important part of the future of our industry" according to EA. For Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, blockchain is a "revolution" in gaming. Non-fungible tokens, a blockchain-backed means of owning digital assets like ugly drawings of monkeys, are being talked up as the next big thing in gaming, but there's one problem: no one's been able to tell me what the Hell for?

For all the interest NFTs are currently generating on social media and in tech board rooms, it's hard to see a bright future for them in videogames. Most of what they promise for players is already possible using non-blockchain technology, and the one advantage they offer - that of portable digital ownership - is unimaginable in the current universe of triple-A games publishing.

If you want to see the future of NFTs in games, look no further than the fate of Valve's tragic collectible card game, Artifact. Based on characters and concepts from the massively popular Dota 2, Artifact was designed with help from Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield and used a unique business model: players could buy and sell cards outside of the game by using the Steam Marketplace. Rare and powerful cards would increase in value, but players were free to trade or sell cards as they saw fit.

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Artifact Foundry is now Generally Available

Although we made Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry free alongside our announcements about those games last week and put them both on the same store page, the button to install or play Artifact Foundry didn't work (it incorrectly installed or launched Classic).

This has been remedied and now anyone should be able to install either or both versions, and a final patch for Artifact Foundry has been released.

Artifact Classic News

Artifact saw a mysterious player count jump over new year, six years after Valve’s trading card game died off

Defunct Valve card game Artifact sort of comes back to life, again

Valve's abandoned card game suddenly experiences a surge in players

NFT games will be every bit as successful as Artifact

Artifact Foundry is now Generally Available