Valve made an official statement about the future of Artifact, the Dota 2 card game that was launched back in 2018.
Artifact and its reboot Artifact (2.0) beta will no longer receive any future updates from Valve since they made the decision to cancel any further development of this title. Despite launching to a strong reception, the game started to dwindle down very soon after its initial success.
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Later, the team responsible for Artifact decided to revamp the whole game. Apparently, they have been working internally for about a year and a half at this point in time. Since they couldn’t garner enough players to keep the operation viable, Valve has decided to stop any further development.
Instead, Artifact and its subsequesnt reboot Artifact 2.0 will be free-to-play from now on.
Here’s an overview of the final changes to 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.
The final release of 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.
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So, Valve made the decision to make the game completely free-to-play. However, they are not going the provide any sort of gameplay updates moving forward.