Valve has ended development on Artifact

Valve is ending development on Artifact, following over a year’s worth of work on rebooting the troubled virtual trading card game (TCG) based in the Dota 2 universe. It originally launched in 2018, designed by famed Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield. Despite “good initial sales” during a time when Blizzard’s Hearthstone was at peak popularity, Valve says its player count fell off “pretty dramatically.” At launch, our sister site Polygon said the game was “deep, but burdened by its marketplace.”

Both versions of the game, Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry (also known as Artifact 2.0 beta), are now free to play. All cards and packs that were previously available for purchase can now be earned just by playing the game. The...

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