Valve's Latest Game, Artifact, Has Lost 60% of Players in Its First Week

Megalith

Megalith

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Valve’s latest game appears to be somewhat of a flop. Artifact, a digital collectible card title, has managed to lose 60% of its players in just one week: “…the game peaked at 60,740 players on launch day; however, that number is now sat at around 25,000 at the time of writing.” Some blame the payment model, which requires players pay for both the base game and card packs.

Understandably, many players believe it’s almost impossible to play Artifact and remain competitive in the game’s constructed modes without spending real money on the game’s marketplace or by buying card packs directly (each card pack costs $2). It’s a model that severely punishes casual players of your game and serves only to really work for hardcore fans.
 
Valve releases game no one wants, charges to much for it, and loses most of its player base. Duh.

Meanwhile, Half Life or Left for Dead could easily make a fortune. Hell at this point it wouldn't even need to be that revolutionary.
 
MTG Arena did it's model correct. You can earn cards / gold / gems in game , buying packs/gems just speeds things up more , but you can get away with spending very little/nothing and still do the events/tournaments etc.

Artifact might be the most abusive payment model for a card game I've seen.
 
Aireoth said:
Valve releases game no one wants, charges to much for it, and loses most of its player base. Duh.

Meanwhile, Half Life or Left for Dead could easily make a fortune. Hell at this point it wouldn't even need to be that revolutionary.
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That's what I don't understand. Valve has several cash cows on their hand but refuse to develop them. Instead they release junk like this that nobody wants.
 
Games no one wants, steam boxes out of paranoia windows 8 was the end of the gaming world. With decisions like this, let us hope "In the unlikely event of the discontinuation of the Steam network, measures are in place to ensure that all users continue to have have access to their Steam games." does not become "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."
 
Why did this flop? Two reasons Hearthstone is established and wizards of the coast launched their new venture into esports Magic The Gathering Arena
 
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Time2Kill said:
That's what I don't understand. Valve has several cash cows on their hand but refuse to develop them. Instead they release junk like this that nobody wants.
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They're busy with a next gen VR Half-Life game that will blow everyone away.

With its patented design, the fat drains directly into Gabe's mouth.
 
Time2Kill said:
That's what I don't understand. Valve has several cash cows on their hand but refuse to develop them. Instead they release junk like this that nobody wants.
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Developing those titles costs a lot, success is met with a collective “Meh” while failure is met with mobs and flaming pitch forks. Valve is all about the ROI and for them AAA titles aren’t worth it because most of their player base will just wait a few months when it’s on sale.
 
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Got it free, installed it went through the learning portion. Uninstalled it.
 
Dahkoht said:
MTG Arena did it's model correct. You can earn cards / gold / gems in game , buying packs/gems just speeds things up more , but you can get away with spending very little/nothing and still do the events/tournaments etc.

Artifact might be the most abusive payment model for a card game I've seen.
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Pokémon is pretty bad too, imo...
Although, at least you can trade card for card. Can you do that in artifact?
 
Twisted Kidney said:
I hope and pray we're starting to see the beginning of the end of games as a service.

I'm probably wrong. A fellow can dream, can't he?
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I'm playing Diablo.
Diablo one. The DOS one.

And it's damn great and has a lot of what is missing in games these days. The graphics are acceptable but the story, voice, writing and gameplay is fun. I'm happy waiting for good new games, they are out there but are harder to find.
 
N4CR said:
I'm playing Diablo.
Diablo one. The DOS one.

And it's damn great and has a lot of what is missing in games these days. The graphics are acceptable but the story, voice, writing and gameplay is fun. I'm happy waiting for good new games, they are out there but are harder to find.
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Most projects that larger studios greenlight aren't passion projects by people that want to express themselves. When I look at a modern games story, it's really easy to pick out which ones were written by hired quills that have no skin in the game. Instead of writing something that they are emotionally charged with, you get something checking boxes and being filtered through the modern sterilization of speech. Older games were made by small studios (comparatively) staffed with individuals that had a sense of pride and responsibility in the art they were creating. We can still see it today in similar studios like MDPR (cuphead), Matt Thorson's crew (celeste), and my digital crack from Motion Twin (Dead Cells). Even our Polish friends at CDPR have managed to prove that you can make a good game at scale. So what's the problem? Corporate studio models that are staffed by Social Warriors that should otherwise be relegated to the HR department. One of the most important facets of any game for me is the story. I can often overlook virtually everything else in a game if the story is deep, well written, and unique. Trudging through a story like AC:O felt like using a paddle while I'm sitting in a rocket of a cigarette boat. It just doesn't do the medium justice.
 
Krenum said:
Make Half Life 3 , get a fucking clue Valve.
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Even if they did what are the chances that is ends up as a great game. At this point if they did the best they could hope for is a decent FPS with a better than average story. No way would it live up to the hype and they would be roasted for it.
 
Lakados said:
Even if they did what are the chances that is ends up as a great game. At this point if they did the best they could hope for is a decent FPS with a better than average story. No way would it live up to the hype and they would be roasted for it.
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Well yeah, but its better to try and fail than to never try at all. If they did do it, they would have to lay counter measures first, maybe by asking the fans what they want, actually listening to feedback, not putting it out before its ready and so on. I'm sure as you said they would still get backlash but at this point, what do they have to lose?
 
Valve missed the boat by designing the game to be overly complicated with three lanes on different screens and not making a mobile client. And charging $20 in a sea of free digital card games...
 
Krenum said:
Well yeah, but its better to try and fail than to never try at all. If they did do it, they would have to lay counter measures first, maybe by asking the fans what they want, actually listening to feedback, not putting it out before its ready and so on. I'm sure as you said they would still get backlash but at this point, what do they have to lose?
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Boat loads of money.
 
I dont think its the just the microtransactions, the games are just too long and the mechanics have a massive learning curve heck im still confused with how some cards decide to attack each other. Theres also just so much waiting around with the 3 boards for people to play their move, when my mind starts drifting off the game and onto other things i begin to wonder why the hell im playing it.
 
make L4D2 free and release a new premium DLC = profit with min. work.
Heck, even bundling community maps with added on voice work = profit.

Valve being a good game producing company is long gone , it seems
 
None of us are complaining about valve making a healthy profit. We are objecting to: PROFIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! before game.
 
Time2Kill said:
That's what I don't understand. Valve has several cash cows on their hand but refuse to develop them. Instead they release junk like this that nobody wants.
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Because they don't have to care. Valve makes INSANE amounts of money on Steam, and has very few employees since they do little in the way of customer service. As such their profitability is huge. Also they aren't a public company, so they don't have shareholders continually demanding "more more more" no matter how great current results are. Net effect is that they don't need to care about money on the games side of things. They don't have to try and choose projects based off of what is likely to give greatest ROI.

Now that sounds like it should be a good thing... but the problem is you also combine that with Valve flat "no bosses" structure and what it means is people just play with whatever interests them at the time. That's why you'll see something get a bunch of activity and then get ignored. There is no overarching plan, no PMs keeping people on schedule, they just work on whatever toy fascinates them and then move on.

It's sad, because Valve was a really good game dev and Steam gives them the freedom that they could develop excellent games without worrying about the normal constraints on time and budget. However lacking anyone really keeping control of the whole thing and giving it direction... well we get what we have now. They just kinda do whatever and if it works, ok, if it doesn't it gets ignored. It's pretty clear Artifact was not something that they spent a lot of time play testing, iterating, and refining. Rather it was some of their people wanting to do a card game and throwing together what they thought would be cool.
 
Oh yeah, the game is shit to watch people stream as well. And the minions attacking randomly just makes things a pain in the ass.
 
Aireoth said:
Valve releases game no one wants, charges to much for it, and loses most of its player base. Duh.

Meanwhile, Half Life or Left for Dead could easily make a fortune. Hell at this point it wouldn't even need to be that revolutionary.
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Half Life (x "Cross") Left for Dead...The mobile game.
 
Lakados said:
Developing those titles costs a lot, success is met with a collective “Meh” while failure is met with mobs and flaming pitch forks. Valve is all about the ROI and for them AAA titles aren’t worth it because most of their player base will just wait a few months when it’s on sale.
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Conjecture! Who would wait a few months to buy HL3? They can hand in their gamer card on their way out the door.
 
"Valve's Latest Game, Artifact, Has Lost 60% of Players in Its First Week"

It wasn't for lack of trying. Every time I clicked on the tray icon to change games it went straight to an ad for it. Usually defaults back to my library.
 
N4CR said:
I'm playing Diablo.
Diablo one. The DOS one.

And it's damn great and has a lot of what is missing in games these days. The graphics are acceptable but the story, voice, writing and gameplay is fun. I'm happy waiting for good new games, they are out there but are harder to find.
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The original is still fun - I might have to fire it up again. Last time I played it, I was stuck in Las Vegas for 3 weeks to support a conference. Rather than going to casinos and what not, I stayed in my hotel playing Diablo :) Maybe this was pathetic, but I figure it saved me at least a thousand dollars. (Plus, I don't like gambling and not a fan of the Strip).
 
steakman1971 said:
The original is still fun - I might have to fire it up again. Last time I played it, I was stuck in Las Vegas for 3 weeks to support a conference. Rather than going to casinos and what not, I stayed in my hotel playing Diablo :) Maybe this was pathetic, but I figure it saved me at least a thousand dollars. (Plus, I don't like gambling and not a fan of the Strip).
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Much of my work is entertainment related, I'd see a show or two and skip the rest - I do my gambling with business, so if I ever have to do this, I'm bringing Diablo. [H] tradition lol thanks for the heads up!
 
N4CR said:
I'm playing Diablo.
Diablo one. The DOS one.

And it's damn great and has a lot of what is missing in games these days. The graphics are acceptable but the story, voice, writing and gameplay is fun. I'm happy waiting for good new games, they are out there but are harder to find.
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D1 was a W95 title :)
 
if valve ever makes a HL3 it will probably be filled with some recurring monetization scheme just like all other AAA games being released today. I have no hope at all for anything different.
 
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