Valve, the company behind hits like the Half-Life and Portal series, has announced today that it is no longer developing Artifact, the Dota 2 strategy card game released in November of 2018, will go free to play. It mentioned that “despite good initial sales, our player count fell off pretty dramatically.” This was, in no small part, due to the microtransaction model that it was using, in addition to having to buy the game in the first place. As such, it had to re-evaluate the game essentially from scratch, and in the process, created the Artifact 2.0 Beta.
However, due to the fact that the game wasn’t gaining enough popularity, they made the “tough” decision to cease any further development on both the original game (Artifact Classic) and the 2.0 Beta (now known as Artifact Foundry). While that may seem like a loss to some, the good news is that now both games are free-to-play, and what’s more, microtransactions have been eliminated. It is now possible to earn every card in-game without needing to fork over any cash. Those who have bought the game previously, however, will still be able to earn Collector’s Edition cards and sell them on the Steam marketplace.
Artifact Foundry was specifically made to address the complaints that were presented with Artifact Classic. While the development of Artifact Foundry wasn’t fully completed, Valve mentions in its post that “most of what’s missing is polish and art – the core gameplay is all there.” You can find out more information about the differences between the two games on their update history.
What do you think about Artifact going free to play? Let us know in the comments.
