Valve’s attempt at a card game in the style of Magic: The Gathering failed shortly after its release. Now the development is finally stopped.
Artifact was supposed to compete with other card games like Hearthstone, but that went badly, even though Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering, was working on it. However, the game met with widespread rejection and yawning disinterest on the part of the players.
With a revision called Artifact 2.0, Valve wanted to save the game and, above all, improve the pricing model and card purchases. However, the number of players has not recovered as a result.
Reason enough for Valve to finally pull the plug. While most of the game’s development goals had been achieved, they wouldn’t have been able to attract so many players that further development would be worthwhile.
Artifact 1.0 and 2.0 will not go away completely, Valve will now make the games available to players for free. Artifact 1.0 is renamed Artifact Classic. The players receive all cards for free, existing cards in the sets of buyers of the game are converted into Collector’s Edition variants.
Artifact 2.0 will continue as the Artifact Foundry. Here players can acquire all cards by playing, so they no longer have to (and cannot) reach into their wallets.