Artifact hits new player low, loses 97% of its playerbase in under two months
112 replies, posted
ASparkles claim used to be correct. I definitely remember a time when steam offline mode needed online activation. But as others have said, it hasn't been the case for years.
Well I mean, I remember that time as well but it hasn't been true for ages so I dunno why he's parroting this false info when it's so easy to test.
Steam is not as unstoppable as it once appeared. They're facing competition on all fronts now, and don't seem to be keeping up.
AAA publishers never liked Steam's high cut. You need to be a fairly big publisher to get people to even grudgingly use a dedicated client - hence why only EA and Activision really tried, although Ubisoft also gave it a decent go. Users just don't like separate clients - forcing them to use one will cost you a lot in sales. Valve made some pretty big concessions here recently, with the tiered pricing giving best-selling games a bigger cut, but that "lower" cut is still higher than Epic Games Store, or just the marginal cost of your own storefront.
Single-A publishers and big indies are pretty vocally hating both Steam's high cut, and the complete disaster that discoverability has become. Getting on Steam used to mean "free" advertising - essentially paid for by the high distribution cut, but still a solid chance of success. Now? I haven't learned about a new game I want through Steam in years, even with all the recommendation systems and curator systems they've been adding. I find my games through people talking about it on social media, or game news sites, or even just seeing them run at GDQ. Epic can win this group over pretty easily, just by adding some missing features and getting a good stream of games coming out - few enough that they're all hits, but many enough that most good games are on the platform.
Small indies are buried even worse. With literally no barrier to entry, now being a small unheard-of game on Steam is bad for your perception. You're more likely to be an asset flip or a half-assed RPGMaker game than something worth paying for. And the early access funding model has shifted from Kickstarter-style up-front preorders to a Patreon-style pay-for-continued-development, which Steam can't really work with. And again, with such a huge cut, poor discoverability, and inconsistently-enforced rules, they're better off moving to any of the existing shitty Steam clones.
I can foresee an equilibrium shift. Maybe not Epic, but somebody is going to come in and steal Steam's thunder. We'll pretty quickly get to a point where everyone uses EGS (or whatever), dedicated fans use Origin or Battle.net, and Steam gets used mainly by people with huge existing libraries, and indie-game fanatics who want to play stuff too indie for Epic. And maybe VR porn games - Valve is still kind of pushing VR, the biggest draw for which so far has been smut, their publishing standards have fallen to basically "nothing actually illegal please", and "Steam" is actually a pretty great name for a lewd-game storefront.
Even as a diehard Half-Life fan, I can't take pleasure in this. Its just sad. I'd rather they abandon Half-Life but still be working on interesting projects, rather than abandon Half-Life and become irrelevant.
I'm just glad that good card games like slay the spire have orders of magnitude more players than Artifact. (Granted StS is very different and singleplayer but a card game nonetheless)
It's definitely nearing to becoming a game played by a single player at least
Strange it's almost like the Valve fan base was looking for another type of game. Perhaps one that's been promised for over a decade? What could it have been...hmmm...
ricochet 2
they deserve this. valve has lost their way and even though one failed game isn't going to affect them much maybe they'll finally get the kick in the ass they need
TBH I don't actually want a new Half-Life game.
Here's sort of the thing: damn near every FPS now is a Half-Life game. It was that influential on the industry. Call of Duty is just Half-Life with the emphasis on setpiece battles ramped up to 11, and noncombat stuff trimmed away. Titanfall 2 took the anthology aspect of Half-Life 2 (every chapter is almost a separate game) and did it better than any HL2 Episode did. Far Cry is just an open-world Half-Life plus collectathon. Halo is Half-Life with better vehicle sections. It's harder to find a singleplayer FPS that isn't heavily Half-Life derived - maybe nu Doom? That really shook up the core gameplay loop.
Everything that was once unique about Half-Life is now commonplace. More shooters do first-person, in-engine cutscenes than not. Squad AI is nearly universal (and usually better - FEAR totally shit on HL2's AI). Source has no tech lead over other engines - if anything, it's now behind, whereas it was once ahead of the curve in facial animation, physics, HDR. The state of game design is far advanced - HL2's gun feel is awful compared to anything these days, the movement is archaic, the combat is simplistic, the high-level gameplay nonexistent. And, let's face it, Half-Life's story was just raising questions it could never answer. Like most game stories, it was a thin excuse to shuffle between cool gameplay areas, and provide some nice theme and ambiance. It was a pretty well-done excuse-plot, but still just an excuse-plot.
It's not just that I don't trust Valve to make a good Half-Life 3. I don't know if anyone could make a good Half-Life 3. Like, give me infinite money and the ability to hire whoever I want, I'm still not sure how to make a Half-Life 3 that both feels like a Half-Life game, and is a good game. Under such conditions, I could certainly make a great game, a great singleplayer FPS, it just wouldn't feel very Half-Life. Or I could make something that that wraps up the story and feels like Half-Life, but it would feel like a game from 2004.
About the only hope I have is that they can find a way to reinvent the series by moving it to VR. A lot of stale series have managed to find new life by rebuilding themselves after a technological leap. Look at all the 2D games that completely changed when they made the leap to 3D, but reinvigorated themselves (Metroid Prime), or games that found new life in an open-world when the technology allowed it (Grand Theft Auto). A massive tech leap is carte blanche to take the core feeling of a series, and rewrite everything else - and VR is about the only thing that could be such a massive tech leap. I don't know how you would reinvent Half-Life as a VR game, I just think it's the best shot anyone has of making a good Half-Life 3.
Honestly I'm kinda' surprised. Even with everything wrong with it, I expected the Valve brand to be able to carry it.
I wonder if they'll still try to stick it out.
God this is so sad.
Alexa play Triage At Dawn
Yeah but the original BG&E was not online-only (obviously), and I don't recall an online-only requirement being on people's wishlists for BG&E2.
I lost internet at the beginning of december (2018) and I had to tether my phone to log in, then it would work in offline afterwards. Also several games that are still installed (I've checked for their files in windows explorer) have greyed out and are unplayable.
if they had just released it as an actual card game it would probably be doing great
I fucking played steam games on my potato laptop when the whole family went on a day-long car trip down to florida 3 years ago. I didn't even turn the damn computer on until after we were on the road and I had plugged it into the power inverter I bought for the car.
If it's any consolation, most of Valve's old guard left the company years ago and are probably finding success elsewhere.
Haha, eat shot and die Valve. I hope you get bought out by EA.
Why would you want Valve to become even worse than it already is??
I say we get a bunch of players to play ricochet, so it has more players than artifact.
only then will I call this a victory
The game has now gone below 1,500 players
Now calm down, Satan! That is not something you can say out loud.
I know Valve is a giant disappointment at the moment, but they don't deserve being treated like garbage.
Maybe when Half-Life turns 21, Barney will finally give us that beer he owes us. 😞
Good God, imagine EA getting any form of control over Steam.
I still want to play tf2 thank you very much.
I think we all ran out of valve characters laugh bytes for this moment
https://youtu.be/5NgRh-_4Pig
wtf is this thumbnail
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