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Things are not looking up for Artifact. In December, Artifact lost more than half of its player base. According to recent data from Steam Charts, the number of active players has stagnated at only 2300 players or so. It was about 1600 a couple of days ago.
It has not even been 2 months since the release of the game. Valve seemed to have major expectations from Artifact, including setting up a million dollar tournament sometime in 2019. While the game did get a lot of hype initially, the biggest setback for Artifact was being locked behind a $20 paywall.
Artifact was also introduced in a very saturated market. While it did have the Dota 2 mantle to carry the name and the game forward, competitor collectable card games such as Hearthstone, Shadowverse, Gwent, Duelist and Magic: The Gathering are much more economically viable and they are free to play.
Artifact does have the unique feature of re-selling and trading your cards in the Steam market, but that did not seem to incentivize players to get into the game too much. Valve did release an update to fix the initial paywall issues, including a lot of free packs and better pack openings. That did see a return of a few players but did not address the overall issue.
Games such as Hearthstone and Shadowverse already have a mobile version of their game as well, which makes it much more accessible (did I mention, free?)
Valve should maybe consider going the CS: GO route, where they saw a massive spike in players after CS: GO went free to play.
Even then, the game itself is quite complicated for a CCG and it does not stand out or offer anything special that will make players want to switch just yet. Valve will need to rethink their future strategy with Artifact.
