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Having launched in 2018, Artifact hasn't proven to be as popular among players as Valve, or anyone else for that matter, would've hoped. For what it's worth, the House of GabeN didn't mince words in their announcements.
"Artifact, the Dota 2 card game, shipped in November of 2018. Despite good initial sales, our player count fell off pretty dramatically. This warranted a shift from the service/update development model we'd planned to a full reevaluation of the game's mechanics and economy", they wrote on the blog.
Valve insist that the task of rebooting Artifact has gone according to plan, since the team tackled everything set before them.
Unfortunately, that hasn't been enough to keep the game alive, which is why they decided to cease the development of Artifact 2.0 Beta with immediate effect.
"However, we recognize that both versions of Artifact still have players and still have value to the community. For this reason, we're opening both games up to make them available for free to everyone. Final releases of both Artifact Classic and Artifact 2.0 Beta (renamed Artifact Foundry) are now available", the post reads.
Note that Artifact Foundry is technically unfinished, but the core gameplay is all there. So, if you can weather the lack of polish, you can head on over here and start playing.
Artifact will not be selling any card packs since all players get all the cards for free. Paid players have had their existing cards converted into special Collector's Edition versions. Also, paid players can still earn packs of Collector's Edition cards, unlike free players.
You can find the announcement on Steam.
Artifact, Dota 2 trading card game by Valve and Richard Garfield
