Valve stops development of Artifact card game

After 18 months working in the Artifact reboot, Valve has stopped development on the Artifact card game based on DOTA 2.

Though the game got “good initial sales” during its release in November 2018, Valve now says the player count has gone down “dramatically” on Artifact.

The low player count caused Valve to do “a full reevaluation of the game’s mechanics and economy.”

“While we’re reasonably satisfied we accomplished most of our game-side goals, we haven’t managed to get the active player numbers to a level that justifies further development at this time,” says the post written by the Artifact team. “As such, we’ve made the tough decision to stop development on the Artifact 2.0 Beta.”

Both games, Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry (aka Beta 2.0) feature different games modes; they are now free of charge on Steam.

Valve won’t be making any updates to Artifact. However, it announced the final changes to each version.

For Artifact Classic:

• The game is free for everyone to play.
• All players get every card for free. You will no longer be able to buy card packs.
• Paid players’ existing cards have been converted into special Collector’s Edition versions, which will remain marketable. Marketplace integration has been removed from the game.
• Paid event tickets have been removed.
• Customers who paid for the game will still earn packs of Collector’s Edition cards for playing; players who got the game for free will not.

For Artifact Foundry:

• The game is free for everyone to play.
• Players gain access to cards by playing the game. All cards are earned this way; no cards or packs will be for sale and Artifact Foundry cards are not marketable.
• All final card art that was in the pipeline is now in the game.

“We’re proud of the work we’ve done on both games and excited about delivering them to a much larger audience of gamers.”

Check out the Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry page on Steam for more info about the the two versions of Artifact. Visit the Artifact page on Steam if you want to download the game.

[Source]: Steam: The Future of Artifact.