Valve to give digital card game Artifact ‘bigger reboot’

Valve is working on a major metamorphosis of its digital card game Artifact. Internally, the project is even called ‘Artifact 2’. The release of this revamped or brand new game wouldn’t be very far in the future either.

Valve frontman Gabe Newell speaks of a “bigger reboot” of the game, which originally appeared in November of 2018. He also says that the development team is “getting ready for release”, which strongly suggests that it will not be long before this updated game appears. At the same time, an update was posted to the Artifact product page on Friday announcing that players may “be able to notice changes.”

Valve already reported in March of last year that it would focus on larger updates instead of smaller ones. However, the fact that these adjustments would be so large that there is internal Artifact 2 is new, as is the appearance that this metamorphosis is not long in coming.

“GabeN” Artifact calls an “interesting failure”: “We ran an experiment, we got a negative result and now we need to see what we learned from that. So we’ll give it another try. We’ll look at the reaction to the game and ask ourselves: what was wrong with the product and how did it come about?”

Newell has conveyed that the changes to Artifact will be drastic. What is not yet clear is whether this is a completely new game, or a metamorphosis of the existing game. Given the announcement on the product page of the current Artifact, the latter seems more likely.

Newell revealed that and more in an interview with gaming magazine Edge. That edition of the magazine will only be available from Monday, but sister site GamesRadar+ has posted a shorter news item about it.