Valve stops development of card game Artifact and makes it free-to-play

Valve has stopped development of the digital card game Artifact. Both the Classic version and the reboot the studio was working on, which the company now calls Artifact Foundry, will be available for free but will not receive further updates.

Valve does report that it is satisfied with the achievement of the goals it had set for the development of Artifact 2.0 or Artifact Foundry, but this reboot also did not get the number of players needed to justify further development. With this, Valve is pulling the plug on the development of the Dota 2 card game.

The first version of Artifact appeared in 2018 and according to Valve, that game initially sold well, but the number of players quickly dropped dramatically. A year ago, the company announced a major reboot of the game to change this, and then it looked like a release would soon be forthcoming. After that it was quiet for a long time and now the development is stopped.

Because of “the value to the community,” Valve is making both versions of the game available for free. “Technically, Artifact Foundry is an unfinished product, but especially finishing and art are still missing, the core gameplay is there,” said the studio. Either way, the games will no longer be getting updates, players will no longer be able to purchase cards, and the marketplace has been removed from the Classic version. Paid cards have been converted to Collector’s Edition.