Valve has announced this afternoon that Artifact, their go at a DotA-themed card game, has ceased development.
The game originally launched in November 2018 to which it didn't meet Valve's or the community's expectations with Valve announcing in March 2019 that they would be going back the drawing board on the game. It wasn't very surprising considering the game dropped off to less than a thousand average players just a few months after launch. (SteamCharts)
Artifact Classic via SteamCharts
A year went by with no updates on the game, not exactly an oddity in the world of titles that Valve ships, to drop a blog post a year later on March 30, 2020 to announce the 2.0 Beta. The beta started in May 2020 and since then received a series of patches but not much in the way of any player engagement.
Both versions of the game, "Artifact Classic" and "Artifact Foundry" (2.0 Beta), are now available for free to the community and will not see any future updates.
Quote From Valve Artifact, the Dota 2 card game, shipped in November of 2018. Despite good initial sales, our player count fell off pretty dramatically. This warranted a shift from the service/update development model we'd planned to a full reevaluation of the game's mechanics and economy.
It's now been about a year and a half since the current Artifact team began work on a reboot in earnest. 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.
However, we recognize that both versions of Artifact still have players and still have value to the community. For this reason, we're opening both games up to make them available for free to everyone. Final releases of both Artifact Classic and Artifact 2.0 Beta (renamed Artifact Foundry) are now available. Technically Artifact Foundry remains an unfinished product, but most of what's missing is polish and art - the core gameplay is all there. While both games will remain playable, we don’t plan to ship any further gameplay updates.
Here's an overview of our 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 looks like this:
- 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.
(In short, when we say "free", we really mean "free.")
For a detailed explanation of how Artifact Foundry differs from the Artifact Classic, see this page.
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.
To install and play now, head over to the store page.
Thanks,
The Artifact Team
Quote From Valve Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry are two versions of the digital card game originally named Artifact, developed through a collaboration between Valve and renowned designer Richard Garfield. Artifact was designed as a deeply strategic card game, but without the limits of a conventional physical board. After a highly polarizing and ultimately disappointing initial release in November, 2018, a small team at Valve reworked the game into what would become Artifact Foundry, and the original game was renamed to Artifact Classic. Artifact Foundry was designed to address as many complaints about the original game as possible, while maintaining its strategic depth.
Economy
Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry are both free, and every player has access to every card in both games. Neither game features in-app purchases.
When Artifact Classic was released, cards were sold in card packs and could be exchanged between players on the Steam marketplace. When the game was made free and every player was given access to all cards, previously-collected cards were turned into Collectors Edition cards. Collectors Edition cards can still be bought and sold on the marketplace between players, but they are not for sale from Valve and there is nothing to purchase in-game.Game Modes
Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry both feature global matchmaking, bot play, and various game modes, but the game modes are not identical.
Artifact Classic Game Modes
- Full-deck draft gauntlets (build your deck out of a limited selection of cards, then win 5 before you lose 2).
- Constructed gauntlets (build your deck from the entire set, win 5 before you lose 2).
- Preconstructed event with a win-streak leaderboard (choose a pre-built deck, play until you lose).
- Single game constructed global matchmaking
- In-game tournament system
- Constructed bot play
- Tutorial
Artifact Foundry Game Modes
- 1v1 Hero Draft ladder (pick and counter-pick heroes against your opponent, then play with decks generated from those heroes, rank up based on skill).
- Constructed ladder (build your deck from the entire set, rank up based on skill).
- Tutorial (expanded)
- Single Player Campaign
- Constructed bot play
- Hero Draft bot play
- Bot puzzles (including support for player-authored puzzles)
Gameplay
Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry are both games played between two players who each bring a deck of cards and 5 heroes to a battle spread across 3 lanes, with the goal of winning 2 of the lanes before the opponent can win 2 themselves. In Artifact Classic, the lanes are played in sequence, while Artifact Foundry features a simplified zoomed-out gameplay where you can play in any lane at any time.
Artifact Classic gameplay embraces unbounded lane capacity for units, allowing for massive armies to clash with one another. Players choose to play powerful spells and resources into each lane, pressuring their opponent while balancing their momentum as enemy towers fall, or friendly towers come under threat. It features a large number of random events which skillful generals must mitigate with forethought and arcane knowledge.
Artifact Foundry gameplay gives more direct agency – almost all random elements aside from a shuffled deck have been removed – and the gameplay is more focused on heroes, which have been given a significantly more powerful role. In addition to heroes, almost every card in the game has been reworked at least somewhat to be somewhat more impactful, fun, and easier to focus on. Over 100 new cards and 20 new heroes have been introduced in Artifact Foundry.
Comments
I'm actually kind of surprised that it finally died, I thought Valve would try a big push to get Artifact 2.0 to work but apparently they didn't think it was worth it. It makes sense to me though, with how much negative press it got and LoR already existing as a MOBA card-game, Artifact probably was never going to work.
Killed by bad marketing and circlejerking.
It really wanted and tried to do something different. Going the paid route was probably not their smartest move because it killed any interest in the game from the get go and raised the bar to impossible heights.
LoR later moved on in as 'artifact but better' and more or less signed the real artifact's death warrant. 2.0 was never really going to work with LoR practically doing it better.
Always a shame to see a card game have its deck depleted. The 3 Lane system was interesting, too, but the monetisation and excessive RNG when it comes to playing units dragged it down.
Hopefully they at least keep the servers running.
The 3 lane thing is probably what killed it for most casuals who can stomach the 20$ price tag.
I only watched the game in action and the number of times the screen have to flip was amazing.
Hard to see this game survive when you have Hearthstone, Magic & Legends of Runeterra dominating.
When Top Gear was good.
The Hearthstone killer has been dead for quite some time. It technically still exists and functions but without updates it's literally undead now. Alive but not really.
Same as Duelyst. Their last expansion was Trials of Mythron, and sadly, it left an awful sigil of death. Not only did it mark troubles between CPP and Bandai Namco, it's resonsible for releasing a card called Mythron Wanderer.
Wanderer was a special card (each faction got one back then), whcih was a unit, but you couldn't play it until fulfilling a requirement, sort of like a HS Quest. Wanderer, on top of being available for each faction, had the simplest requirement of playing a Highlander deck, and you were rewarded with +1/+1 to EVERY. SINGLE. UNIT that you controlled. This was way too busted, creating some of the most toxic decks to ever grace upon Duelyst, like Wanderer Ragnora or Wanderer Reva.
Wow... Remember when people were calling Keleseth a garbage card during the reveal period of KofT and it turned out to be pretty busted? The card that you mentioned sounds like that but even more overpowered.
You could say that Duelyst's board and summoning mechanics (summoning either near your Generals or units you already had in play) were ok to warrant this buff, but the two aforementioned decks tore that apart. Ragnora had a Hero Power that summoned an egg, which would hatch into a 3/1 with Charge and Windfury (it's originally Celerity, which allowed the unit to perform two actions - either move twice, move and attack, or attack twice), and it could still spawn into an Egg. Now imagine fighting a swarm of 4/2 units every time, ON TOP of eggs being buffed by Wanderer, AND on top of cards like Zoetic Charm, which was an artifact (an enchantment to your General that broke after taking 3 instances of damage) that granted your Eggs Divine Shield that refreshed every turn. Granted, it was still in a highlander pakcage, but it was busted af. Let's not forget that Magmar, the region of Ragnora, was the region of big beefy units.
Reva instead could summon 2/2 units that could attack from any point of the map by having Ranged. Songhai, which is home to Reva, was instead burst and combo oriented, so you could get blown pretty quickly.
Can;t remember if Vetruvian also abused Wanderer, but they also had a really busted deck revolving around Cataclysmic Fault, which made the enitre center row Exhuming Sand (playing a unit from your hand summoned a 2/2 Iron Dervish there - for reference, the entire board was 9x5, thus you summoned five Exhuming Sand in the central row).
Ironically, the game will probably be played a lot more now that it's free.
Happened with Battlefront after it went f2p on epic store.
I hope they don't change their mind again after getting more active players. Free for now, back to paid when people like it a lot.
It's already up to 600 active people compared to the usual 60!
I mean paid closed invite only beta vs free to play open for public scenario. One does not need a degree to see why would there be a difference in the active players 😂 Still so weird how they portrayed their reasons for abandoning development.
a genius business move, clearly
Well, here goes another "Hearthstone Killer"
Yeah, it's difficult to tell what's just Internet hype searching out a new card game, although OutOf.Cards effectively solved that issue for me. If I'm going to get into a new card game, it will be because of this site.