Gabe Newell’s company throws in the towel in an attempt to revive the trading card game designed by Richard Garfield, creator of Magic.
Valve has confirmed the cancellation of development for Artifact after two years trying to revive the project, a trading card game based on the Dota 2 universe with Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering, at the controls. In an official statement addressed to the community, Valve uses the reasons behind this decision; likewise, they anticipate that from now on it will be offered for free in its two available versions. Artifact will continue to be playable.
There was no Áve Fénix with Artifact; a review started in March 2019
Artifact was initially released in November 2018 for Windows and Mac via Steam with the aim of recreating the Dota 2 universe through the collectible card genre, a genre in a state of grace at the time after the rise of projects like Hearthstone or Slay the Spire. “Despite the good initial sales, the number of players dropped dramatically. This justified a change in the service / update development model that we had planned to a complete re-evaluation of the game’s mechanics and economics ”around March 2019, Valve begins saying in the note issued in the early morning of this 5 March.
Artifact
After a year and a half of redesign and being “satisfied” by the progress made, “we have not managed to bring the number of active players to a level that justifies further development at this time. So we have made the difficult decision to stop the development of the Artifact 2.0 beta ”, they add.
Not surprisingly, given the current number of Artifact players, from Valve they consider that the community should remain active, at least for the moment. That is why the final versions of Artifact Classic and the beta of Artifact 2.0 (which is renamed Artifact Foundry) are now available for free on Steam. Mind you, Artifact Foundry is an unfinished project, so there may be problems.
Both Artifact Classic and Foundry are totally free to play. In the first, all players will get the cards for free; there will be no card packs or monetization as that possibility and paid event tickets are eliminated. In Foundry, all cards can be obtained by playing, there will be no packages for sale or trading of cards.
Despite regretting the news, the Artifact team says goodbye with a good taste. “We are proud of the work we have done on both games and excited to deliver them to a much wider audience of gamer,” they say, after thanking the players for their support throughout this time.
