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Artifact is one of three games released by Valve in the last five years. And it was a failure.
Valve will no longer develop Artifact or its sequel, the game developerannouncedtoday. Both versions of the game, Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry (also known as Artifact 2.0) are now free to play.
Artifact launched in November 2018 amidst much fanfare as it was one of the first ‘spin-off’ Dota universe games. It was designed by Richard Garfield of Magic: The Gathering fame. The game was off to a great start but its player numbers quickly fell, partly due to high sale price, complex economy and Valve’s inability to effectivelymarket the game to its potential customers. Effective today, Valve has released the ‘unfinished’ Artifact 2.0 and both versions of the game will now be free-to-play for all Steam users.
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. As such, we’ve made the tough decision to stop development on the Artifact 2.0 Beta.
Both games will be playable but players should not expect any more gameplay updates from the developer team.
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What’s Next for Existing Artifact Players?
Valve has opened up both games and made them free-to-play for everyone. Players can earn all the previously purchasable cards. Every player has access to every card in both games.
Here are the final changes to Artifact Classic:
The release of Artifact Foundry looks like this:
When Valve announced Foundry last year, there were high hopes of a revival of fortunes for the card game. But with dwindling player numbers, Valve has now released the game. Valve says the game is technically unfinished, but a lot of what’s remaining is polish and art. The gameplay release is as per expectations and existing users can expect to enjoy the game for its core gameplay.
Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry are very similar games but feature key differences in economy, game mode and gameplay.
