There’s a website out there that will tell you if Artifact is dead. Spoiler alert: the answer is yes.
According to IsArtifactDead.com, the new authority on the current living and/or dead status of the digital card game Artifact, there are 76 people playing the game as of the time of this writing. That’s down from roughly 2,700 people playing in January, according to Steam Charts, and down from just over 60,000 soon after the game launched around this time last year.
Since Artifact is largely a competitive card game where you play against other players, if there aren’t any players to play against, you could reasonably call the game “dead.” Hence the website.
We’re not sure who or what made the website, but it’s got a fairly simple design. All it does is tell the viewer how many people are currently playing Artifact and makes a judgment call as to the health of the game. We’re guessing anything in the triple-digits is low enough for the game to be declared dead, although we also expect that the specific number will fluctuate depending on the time of day and where the site draws its data from.
Beneath the pronouncement of Artifact’s demise is the tombstone-esque observation of Artifact’s lifespan: "RIP Artifact, Nov 28, 2018 - Oct 08, 2019."
It’s safe to say at this point that Artifact is the biggest flop in Valve history. The Washington-based developer/publisher expected Magic and Hearthstone players to flock to their offering, and when that didn’t happen, they floundered about desperately searching for ways to stem a steady exodus of Artifact’s playerbase.
The primary complaint against Artifact has been its almost ostentatious monetization model. When Artifact launched, new cards could only be purchased and trading on the Steam Marketplace wasn't allowed. This basically prevented any player progression without paying for new cards as there were no other means of acquiring them.
Valve eventually allowed trading, but the damage was already done. After two months, Artifact lost 95% of its players.
In March, Valve announced that they were going to stop updating Artifact incrementally in favor of larger updates that address Artifact's root issues, but by that point, nobody was really listening. They'd all gone back to playing Hearthstone or Magic.
So now Artifact is dead. Will it be resurrected? Only Valve knows for certain.