Valve is dropping development on Artifact 2.0. The reboot was intended to right the ship for the studio’s failed take on card games, but after over a year in development, the devs have found that there’s not enough interest from players to keep things going. But now, both versions of Artifact are going completely free for everyone.
“It’s now been about a year and a half since the current Artifact team began work on a reboot in earnest,” Valve says in the announcement. “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. As such, we’ve made the tough decision to stop development on the Artifact 2.0 beta.”
The original Artifact is now completely free – no purchase to start playing, and every single card is unlocked from the start. Players who already owned cards will see those cards transformed into ‘Collector’s Edition’ versions that can be sold through the marketplace. But that’s the only marketplace integration in the game now – everything else has been stripped out.
The beta version of Artifact 2.0 is now going to be called Artifact Foundry, and it too is completely free. Cards are earned in-game, and there’s no marketplace component at all here.
“We’re grateful to all Artifact players, and particularly to those who were able to help us tune and refine what would become Artifact Foundry. The team feels this is the approach that best serves the community. We’re proud of the work we’ve done on both games and excited about delivering them to a much larger audience of gamers.”