Artifact's Player Count is Already Dangerously Low

There were a lot of problems with Valve's battle card game Artifact, at least on a community interest standpoint. And now, we're seeing the result of that as the player count drops to dangerously low numbers only three months after its official release.

According to player data from SteamCharts, first noticed by Reddit user /u/steal332, Artifact has had an approximate average player count of 705 players over the last 30 days. This is down 50 players from the month prior. Both of these are practically nothing compared to the 60,000 concurrent players seen in the game's first few months.

To compare: No Man's Sky, the game with a severely damaged reputation, still has an average of 2,000 players to this day. Granted, No Man's Sky has undergone plenty of large content updates to be more true to its original vision. So let's look at the PC version of Fallout Shelter, Bethesda's base management mobile game. Just the Steam PC version has more concurrent players (905 average) than Artifact at this point.

Valve's reveal of the card game was met with some pretty heavy discontent. It was announced in a time where every major publisher was making their own battle collectible card game. Hearthstone was in full force, while GWENT was in open beta and Bethesda had already released the Elder Scrolls: Legends.

This is a perfect example of what happens when you rely more on market trends than on consumer feedback.