I see a game that was dead on arrival I call it a flop. Simple as that. A game needs to sell. A multi-player game needs players. Artifact had none of that, therefore trying to use it to defend Valve’s game development ability is laughable at best.
Artifact has players. Its just not at the level of Hearthstone.
Yeah. 31 players online right now.
Let’s not forget that Valve also ended development for it already.
Vs the 1000s to 10s of thousands of daily HS players. I’m always down for card games. Artifact was meh at best.
Technical milestones don’t mean a damned thing when talking about the success, or lack there of, of a game.
And your point? Its not Hearthstone. It was a gamble on DotA 2’s success. They could not sway enough of the Hearthstone players.
Artifact is free to play. DotA 2 is free to play. HotS MOBA is free to play and Blizz announced that they were stopping development because they did not have the player base to justify continued active development. This was very disappointing because I liked HotS. Sounds floppy to me. DotA 2 has like 4 times the number of heroes, has an active eSports scene, is still being developed, and has massive prize pools.
If you want to point at a real flop, google “Warcraft 3 refunded”. Take your time. Despite, all that money, brain power, talent, full access to the code, and they still could not get it right. Worse yet, they triggered a full enrage of their player base, akin to a slave revolt, to request refunds en masse. I’m going to count your arguments as shut down.
My point is that you’re trying to use the biggest failure from Valve to try and defend it and somehow think that game is noteworthy.
As for those Blizzard games you brought up… well I see no one trying to defend them here.
It is free now after they rebooted it and it still failed miserably. It launched with a price tag upfront + mtx for cards.
The number of players aren’t even important (quite the opposite since sales != quality). When you release a game and then pretty much immediately announces that you abandon it because it was an immense failure, then yeah, it was a failure.
Can’t consider a game that produced a lot of revenue for its first few years then died off a flop. A free game that almost no one ever played, that was hyped up by Valve to be the next big thing so much that everyone was thinking HL3, that is a flop despite any technical milestones.
Very similar to the MtG ARPG whose beta test lasted longer than the live version. Devs pulled the plug almost immediately. It was hot garbage designed to rake in money. Not Sure if Artifact was supposed to be a money cow, I was bored after a few matches then uninstalled.
Tell that to the Linux gamers who have to contend with the Windows inertia. Its a native Linux game. I purchased it. I’m not a big fan of Hearthstone or online card games in general. However, I have no problem supporting a company that caters to my interests. Artifact is out classed because its on Andriod and iOS. There is just a much bigger pool of players on Hearthstone to begin with (Android/iOS). As you said it was meh and I’m betting the majority of Hearthstone players felt the same way, which is why it did not reach astronomical success.
There was patch for Artifact on 3/4/2021.
I’m going to send you to google “Warcraft 3 refunded” as well.
I don’t care if it was native Linux or not, the game flopped, even Valve knew which is why they basically abandoned it.
Such a weird hill to die on dude. It’s OK if you like the game. Saying it flopped is not an insult to you.
HS is an astronomical success, $400-500M estimated yearly revenues.
Not sure how that is relevant.
Blizzard pretty much haven’t released a good game since Starcraft 2 (not counting expansions and remasters)
But then, Blizzard isn’t buying ATVI (obviously) so their incompetences wouldn’t really matter much for this comparison.
And yeah, WC3R was an immense flop.
No one is claiming WC3R was not a flop. Like I said weird effing hill to die on.
I disagree, D3, OW, HS, and HotS are all good, as well some expansions like MoP, and Legion are considered top tier by many.
Yeah, definitely. They are the reason I excluded expansions 
HotS is pretty good in some areas (and a pay to win mess in others), but then, even Blizzard considers it a failure, so might also not be the best example here.
Now, years after players left and really because they couldn’t make it into a successful seaport
But for 4 or 5 years it was a successful. It ran it’s course, not all of a sudden became a flop. Flops are from the start.
I know most will not care about the cross platform nature. However, it matters to those who want more dev shops to come to the Linux camp. The game did not have massive success, but you have to understand that it was going up against a giant no matter the technical milestones. I’m glad that it works as a proof of concept to demonstrate what can be done on Linux and Mac. I’m not trying to defend their failure. I’ve seen some bad Linux ports and some crappy releases (quality wise). Artifact was a high quality release. It just did not gain traction.
Most of M$'s games are from dev shops they gobbled up. Its like buying up Blizz, Blizz releases D4 that was already mid development, D4 is a huge success, and then saying M$ is a high quality game dev shop. Nah bro. M$ has a few golden goodies but I don’t count them as being on the level of the old Blizzard that created War3 TFT and the original WoW. M$ is a holding company.
So are Valves btw. Have they actually ever made anything “themselves” other than Half Life? Everything else seems to be mods they bought, and a few companies here and there (seems like Artifact was their own however)
But MS acquisitions have released games that started development long long after they were acquired. Or most recently Halo Infinite from a homegrown studio. Or collaborations with studios they have not bought, like with Ori or Age of Empires 4 in recent time. I mean, MS probably released more games in the last few months than Valve did in the last decade.
Not sure why I am on the side of “defending” the horror that is MS… but Valve sure is not better as a gaming company. Rather the opposite.
Which they created while being owned by a literal holding company (and which MS is not).
343 Industries was created because of the departure of Bungie other wise it would have been Bungie. I know this is going to sound like splitting hairs but XBox game studios, formerly M$ game studios, is basically a holding company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Game_Studios#Subsidiaries_and_divisions
Again this is going to sound like splitting hairs but most of M$ games target Windows and Xbox. Valve is targeting Win, Mac, Linux, Andriod, iOS. Those on that list that are not Windows also mean Vulkan and for Mac its their Vulkan/Metal game API. This is much more complex than just writing for DX11, DX12, and DX12 on the Xbox.
M$ has an entire legion of game dev shops compared to Valve, they have simpler set of APIs to target (DX11/12), and 2 platforms to target mostly (Win/Xbox). Very few of M$ titles target Mac. They should be pushing out way more games than Valve considering their deep pockets and their huge army of dev shops. I’ll let you do the hunting if you can find a M$ game title post 2010 that targets Linux, is native, AND is not a product by a gobbled up dev shop. Here… I’ll help you out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Game_Studios#Subsidiaries_and_divisions
Most don’t consider Linux a viable gaming platform thus don’t bother developing for it. However, there are games that are high quality native ports. Valve went a step further and demonstrated a high quality game that is Linux native and cross platform from start to finish. When someone argues Linux isn’t viable, I can point to Valve’s titles that are:
- native
- multiplayer
- cross platform
- built on Vulkan
- high quality audio and graphics
- high performance (not a bag of cat turds like Cyberpunk’s code was at release)