Diablo 4’s fall from grace has it competing with the Dota 2 spinoff you probably forgot existed

The downfall of Blizzard’s Diablo 4 is already a spectacle to behold, but some players have really put it into perspective this week after pulling up Twitch streaming statistics. Shockingly, fewer people are streaming Diablo 4 today than the ill-fated Dota 2 card game Artifact.

Dota players were quick to celebrate Diablo 4’s status as “dead”—even though active player counts indicate otherwise—in a Sept. 11 Reddit thread discussing the Twitch viewership statistics. A screenshot of each game’s total concurrent Twitch viewer count was included, with Diablo 4 trailing behind Artifact’s 546 viewers.

Even worse, all of Artifact’s “streamers” aren’t even playing the game. Most are streaming other games or even movies and TV shows under the Artifact title, seemingly a safe haven for such activities.

Artifact, Valve’s Dota 2 card-game spinoff created in 2018, looked to capture an ever-growing audience fresh off the heels of Blizzard’s Hearthstone and Wizards of the Coast’s Magic The Gathering: Arena, which gave birth to a new generation of digital card games. Where some succeeded, others failed to catch on—with Artifact very much falling in the latter.

Despite an attempt to revive the game with Artifact’s 2.0 update, Valve ultimately pulled the plug in 2021. Only 80 concurrent players launched the game today according to Steam Charts.

This obviously pales in comparison to Diablo 4’s reported 300,000-plus player base according to ActivePlayer.io, proving that while streaming numbers matter, they aren’t an accurate gauge for whether a game is “alive or dead.”

Nevertheless, Diablo 4’s fall from grace is remarkable to witness, especially after the Season of the Malignant’s season launch in July. From complaints regarding the game’s economy to how stale and uninspired its endgame has become, players are switching off the title more than ever—especially after a packed month of new game releases including the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield.

While it’s far from Artifact’s status as a truly dead game, many Diablo fans will be hoping Blizzard addresses their complaints ahead of Diablo’s season two launch in mid-October. In the meantime, don’t let a bunch of Twitch streaming stats get in your way if you’re enjoying the game.