[ad_1]
Once upon a time, digital card games were all the rage thanks to the success of Blizzard’s Hearthstone, based on Warcraft lore, but few managed to replicate its magic formula. Even older brands in the real-world physical TCG / CCG industry, like Magic The Gathering, didn’t fare as well and Mojang’s first foray into that market, Scrolls, was an even bigger failure. Unsurprisingly, Valve also tried their luck designing Artifact around the Dota 2 MOBA, but now it seems the end is near for the Classic and “2.0” Foundry versions.
Hearthstone brought the concept of “heroes” from the RTS and MOBA genres to card game mechanics, but Artifact went one step further. He also applied the ideas of lanes, towers, and even chills, making the game really look like skirmishes from Dota 2, simply played on digital cards. Although praised for its unique gameplay, even Valve admits that the number of players plummeted shortly after its release in 2018.
That pushed the Valve team to work on a reboot, informally called Artifact 2.0, last year. The developers said that they were able to achieve their goals on the game side but, in the end, the decrease in the number of players could not justify further work on the game. As such, it is formally announcing that development of Artifact 2.0, which was already in Beta, will no longer continue but, thankfully, it is not ruling it out entirely either.
In what can be considered a generous move, Valve is releasing Artifact 2.0 to the public for free, now formally known as the Artifact Foundry. Everything in the game is free and there will be no economy to sell and buy cards, whether in the game or otherwise. In other words, Artifact Foundry will be available as it was during beta development.
Unfortunately, the announcement also mentions the final release of the original game which is now called Artifact Classic. Valve is shutting down the game’s market integration and players will no longer be able to purchase card packs. If it looks like the company is shutting down Artifact, it probably is exactly what it is and it will only be a matter of time before the servers are completely shut down, officially ending the short life of the game.
