Six years after the death of Valve’s trading card game, Artifact saw a mysterious player count jump in the new year.

Last June, Valve’s trading card game Artificial The Classic peaked at 78 players. November was a little rosier for those who left Multiplayer game, monthly high of 1,028. Then, on New Year’s Day, that number jumped to 11,900 players on Steam — the second-highest in the same period besides launch. They soon disappeared. Who were these mysterious drivers who flock to the desert, echoing the halls of Valve’s grim flops like your mate uses the word ‘liminal’ to a dying mall? Forbes, The first to report on the eventsI do not know. No one knows. Someone might actually know, but writing ‘nobody knows’ makes it all the more impressive. Let’s dig in.

This latest top 24 echoes the massive increase of 12,500 players last December to around 14,000, in just one day. Forbes speculates that the reason for the lack of popular community or influencer activity on Twitch, YouTube, or similar is “likely bots.” There’s no demand for Artifact cards in the marketplace, Forbes says, so unless Valve is hiding something Half life 3 Along with this, there is no clear reason why this should be. Unless…

As reported by the game’s subreddit, he has been working on his own theory IGN. Artifact used to train AI? are there Cheating bots increase their game time To build legitimacy for other nefarious purposes? You can become a pirate by using the free-to-play game AppID/SDK to hide other games – Glory, According to one posterIs it usually reserved for Spacewar?

Paul Curtin digs. This hereBut the basic idea is that Pirates gives cracked games the Spacewar game app ID, which was part of the Steamworks software dev kit as a test tool. The pirate game appears on Steam as Spacewar, which has a slightly skeptical British bobby twirling their wands and whistling and doing whatever matches the platform they decide to move.

If you’re interested in delving into the history of artifact fiction, check out Will Partins A shiny piece Because Waypoint remains the last Chronicle. The game stopped development and went free-to-play It is back in 2021“We are currently unable to achieve active player numbers to a level that warrants further growth,” Valve said.

It’s Valve’s newest multiplayer offering. ClosureWhich Matt Cox He wrote about it here.