summation
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Artifact reached 12,000 players, which was strangely much more than usual.
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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 is still confused by the sudden surge, as this isn't the first time Artifact has seen an unexplained spike.
For unknown reasons the valve artifact The card battler game's player count suddenly skyrocketed, losing nearly 12,000 players in one day. artifact This game was first released in 2018, dota 2 universe. The game is particularly notable for receiving an incredibly mixed response upon its release, with many believing that Valve is chasing Blizzard's trend. hearthstone. Disappointment and mild enthusiasm for the game turned into hostility when: artifact's pricing and monetization model were also revealed.
artifact It appears to have been abandoned barely months after release, and has gone a year without an update. Valve has announced a revamp of the game in the form of: Artifact 2.0But these plans also failed. thus, Artifact 2.0has become completely free to play, with older versions of the game artifact classic And the revamped game is relic foundryThere are no further development plans. There was a brief surge in player numbers in 2021 after the game launched for free, but the title has essentially disappeared. For some reason, a recently defunct game suddenly saw a surge in player count.
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Based on some data from SteamDB, artifact On January 1, 2025, the number of players exceeded 12,000. This is a big improvement as the average number of players on most days of the game is just over 100. The sudden surge in players appears to have started on December 31st, with the number going from 400 to 4000 players within an hour. Although that number falls short of the game's maximum concurrent player count of 60,000. artifactIt's a strange phenomenon to see a sudden surge in numbers for a title after its initial release.
Explaining the sudden ‘popularity’ of artifacts
In most cases, artifact The player base is mainly confused as to why and how this defunct game suddenly had 12,000 players. artifactThe number of concurrent players has soared since going free-to-play in 2021, barely exceeding 1,000. It's definitely strange to suddenly gain 12K in two days. It is also questionable that this momentum has crashed and been depleted back to the average of 150.
This isn't the first time something like that has happened. artifact saw a sudden surge in player numbers in 2024, as it did on December 14th. Player count soared up to 14,000, stayed there for a few days, and then dropped again on the 17th. that artifact The player community isn't sure what's causing the sudden surge in player numbers, but many suspect it may be because scam bots are increasing playtime to make Steam accounts look legitimate. Another theory involves playing pirated video games, but the answer to this question is: artifact It's still a mystery.