Valve's Dota themed card game Artifact has now well and truly failed, as they've now stopped the 2.0 redevelopment which is now named Artifact Foundry with the original as Artifact Classic and both now free to play.
In a post titled "The Future of Artifact", Valve mentioned how the player count fell off dramatically and it was pretty much dead shortly after being released. Even though the big 2.0 revamp was far along in development, they've now formally and totally shelved it as they "haven't managed to get the active player numbers to a level that justifies further development at this time".
Neither game has micro-transactions, they're both properly free now. However, previous purchases entitle players to Collectors Edition cards. These special cards can be bought and sold on the Steam Market, players who purchased it originally will also be able to earn these cards by playing, free players joining now will not.
There are some major differences between them like how you play across the board. The original, now Artifact Classic you would play each lane across the game in a sequence of turns, but Artifact Foundry has a more simplified take on it where you have the whole board and play in any lane at a time. Each version also has different game modes available.
For a full run-down of the differences between Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry, see this post.
Both versions are now on the combined Steam store page.
Personally, I am sad to see this. Artifact had fun and engaging gameplay, along with great visuals but it was the monetization model that ultimately killed it. The idea that you had to pay for it, then pay more to play more of it across some of the modes was not good. Perhaps in time now it's free, it might see a reasonable rise in the player count. For now though, Valve has no further plans to update either version.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Kimyrielle Mar 4, 2021
questioner9 Mar 4, 2021
I had the Artifact Beta 2 steam page on my wishlist and never saw anything about it becoming available.
RickAndTired Mar 5, 2021
They chose to not let people play and then said not enough people played.
I don't really understand this. Hasn't Artifact 2 been in closed beta? How would they expect to get the player count up before they released it or made it an open beta?Yeah, their reasoning is more than a little shady.
I had the Artifact Beta 2 steam page on my wishlist and never saw anything about it becoming available.
"We didn't get high player numbers with our opt-in beta that many didn't even know about."
No shit.
I, too, was just waiting for 2.0 to come out to give it a go. As I suspect the vast majority of others were.
IMO, it's probably just a pretext argument for them losing faith either that it will do good once out or losing faith that they can actually fix the problems.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 5 March 2021 at 7:48 am UTC
They chose to not let people play and then said not enough people played.
Probably they got negative feedback and this was the final nail in the coffin.
junibegood Mar 5, 2021
I don't see anything wrong with selling a digital card game product the same way. Where you can go wrong is: no demo mode to try it out, or unfair advantage for those who buy more cards. It's hard to balance, yes, but the people who have more cards should ideally just have more variety and those with fewer cards should still be able to win. I never played Artifact, so I don't know what the paid cards situation was like, but I know Valve failed giving a free taste.
If it was free to play from start, maybe the result would be different.Yeah . . . maybe it would have been a massive success and yet lost them money.
Comandante Ñoñardo Mar 6, 2021
C'mon lazy fatman! The only Valve game We want has a number 3 on it...
HAHAHA!Artifact 3.0?
C'mon lazy fatman! The only Valve game We want has a number 3 on it...
No, silly! Portal 3!HAHAHA!Artifact 3.0?
C'mon lazy fatman! The only Valve game We want has a number 3 on it...
Valve is a beacon of light for gamers with Steam. But when it pushes to far and go anti-consumer they are as vulnerable to gamers backlash as anyone else. We've seen this many times and also with other companies (CD - project). These facts dismantle the rethoric other openly anti consumer companies argue to attack us when we strongly oppose their misdeeds, that in some way gamers are Valve groupies always ready to defend them against anyone and anything and at the same time attacking their competitors with no logic or reasonable argument.
Artifact in specific has been a well deserved failure. But it has been a publishing failure rather than a development one. The game was actually good, it was the monetization model chosen that killed it. Maybe making it F2P might allow it to live a 2nd, or better, an actual life.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1269260/discussions/0/3112522283879362228/
Artifact story is the most obvious and immediate proof that in gaming there are no untouchable Gods when it comes to publishers.Generally agreed. But I don't think it's paying for the game that bothered people so much as the pay-to-win model imported from physical card games.
Valve is a beacon of light for gamers with Steam. But when it pushes to far and go anti-consumer they are as vulnerable to gamers backlash as anyone else. We've seen this many times and also with other companies (CD - project). These facts dismantle the rethoric other openly anti consumer companies argue to attack us when we strongly oppose their misdeeds, that in some way gamers are Valve groupies always ready to defend them against anyone and anything and at the same time attacking their competitors with no logic or reasonable argument.
Artifact in specific has been a well deserved failure. But it has been a publishing failure rather than a development one. The game was actually good, it was the monetization model chosen that killed it. Maybe making it F2P might allow it to live a 2nd, or better, an actual life.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2418823427
The game is fun and not to hard.
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