Summary
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Artifact has mysteriously gained 12,000 players, a significant jump from its usual number.
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The surge in players began on December 31, raising suspicions of potential bot activity or piracy.
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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 had a sudden spike in player numbers, rising to nearly 12,000 players before disappearing within a day. Artifact is a game that was first released in 2018 and is a card game that takes place in Dota 2 universe. This game in particular is known for having an incredibly mixed reception upon its reveal, with many believing that Valve is chasing a trend set by Blizzard. Hearthstone. Disappointment and mild enthusiasm for the game turned to hostility when ArtifactPricing and monetization models were also revealed.
Artifact it was seemingly abandoned almost months after its launch and without updates for a whole year. Valve announced a remake of the game in the form of Artifact 2.0but even these plans failed. as such Artifact 2.0The cancellation of the game resulted in the game becoming completely free and the old version of the game A classic artifact and a redesigned game creature Artifact Foundrywith no further development plans. While the game saw a brief spike in players in 2021 after going free-to-play, the title is effectively dead. For some reason, the defunct game recently had a sudden spike in players.
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Based on some data from SteamDB, Artifact On January 1, 2025, it gained over 12,000 players, which is a big step up since the game usually barely has over 100 players on most days. The sudden increase in the number of players seems to have started on December 31st, from 400 to suddenly 4000 players within an hour. Although this number falls short of the game's current maximum player count of over 60,000 ArtifactIt's a strange phenomenon to see a title skyrocket when it's first launched.
An explanation for the sudden “popularity” of the artifact
For the most part, it is Artifact the player base is mostly confused as to how and why this defunct game suddenly had 12,000 players. ArtifactThe game's growth since going free-to-play in 2021 has barely broken over 1,000 concurrent players; getting 12K from nothing in two days sure is special. The fact that this momentum crashed and burned back to the 150 average is also suspect.
It's not the first time Artifact saw a sudden increase in the number of players in 2024, as it also happened on December 14. The number of players peaked at 14,000, hovered around that number for several days, and bounced back on the 17th. The Artifact the gaming community isn't sure what caused the sudden increase in players, though many suspect it could be due to fraudulent bots extending playtime to make their Steam account look legitimate. While the second theory involves playing pirated video games, the answer to this question is probably Artifact is still a mystery.