Valve officially halted the development of Artifact, its difficult collectible card game based on the DOTA universe.
Valve made the announcement on Thursday, citing a low player count after the game’s launch in 2018 and the subsequent reboot, Artifact 2.0 beta.
“Although we are reasonably satisfied that we have achieved most of our game goals, we have not been able to take the number of active players to a level that justifies further development at this time,” writes the Artefato team. “As such, we made the difficult decision to stop the development of Artifact 2.0 Beta.”
For those artifact players who are still around (or for those who have never tried it), Valve is making both versions of the artifact free for everyone, and players will be able to access all cards for free. Card packs will no longer be available for purchase.
For players who have purchased card packs in Artifact Classic in the past, they will see their cards converted into special versions of the Collector’s Edition, which will remain tradable between players. That said, market integration is being removed from the game. Players who previously paid for the basic Artifact game will continue to receive Collector’s Edition cards to play, while players who obtained Artifact for free will not do so. Players can read all the details here.
“We are grateful to all the artifact players, and particularly to those who were able to help us adjust and refine what would become the artifact foundry,” writes the artifact team. “The team feels that this is the approach that best serves the community. We are proud of the work we did in both games and excited to deliver them to a much larger audience of players.