Artifact

Artifact is a digital collectible card game developed and published by Valve. The game focuses on online PVP, and is based on Dota 2 universe. Artifact was designed by Magic: The Gathering Richard Garfield. It was released for Windows, macOS, and Linux in November 2018.

Due to negative reception from players, Valve reworked the game as Artifact 2.0, altering several features, including removing the need to buy or trade cards with money. It was tested through a closed beta starting in March 2020. A year later, Valve announced that it had ceased development of the game, citing a lack of player interest, and made both versions of the game free to play. The original Artifact was renamed Artifact Classic and Artifact 2.0 was renamed Artifact Foundry.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game was made as an attempt to cash grab on the trend of digital trading card games and eSports (spite of the former was five to seven years too late on the digital card game bandwagon), unlike some other digital card games. It was accused of being a Hearthstone clone since the game was announced.
 * 2) Unlike other digital card games with microtransactions, the game has an initial $20 price.
 * 3) *While granted that some card games aren't free like Yu-Gi-Oh: Legacy Of The Duelist aren't free, they at least have single player and/or offline content.
 * 4) *The game is finally free now, but even then that didn't help bring the players back
 * 5) You can't trade cards even though this is a trading card game.
 * 6) The starter deck that you start the game with is not very good, with the only way to improve it is by paying money for better cards.
 * 7) The game is filled with microtransactions which are overpriced, while claiming it was intended to be "more different" from the other digital card games, has resulted in card packs being expensive (with them normally costing around $10 in the game's launch, although this was reduced to $5 later on a patch).
 * 8) Since the game is pay to win, you either pay for microtransactions or grind a lot, over the same 'reason' as #6.
 * 9) The new intro also introduced with the game, has come out as lazy has ever been for Valve made, as with any other problems with the modern Valve, and as mediocre ripoffs of both (the old 2013-2016 Marvel and Super Smash Bros) popularly recognized intros as their own.
 * 10) Due to the mass departure of players via lack of interest, matchmaking has become very slow, with just taking multiple minutes just to find an opponent.
 * 11) This game has no achievements making it another reason to pointless of buying it, even though it's a Valve game–along they created the achievement mechanic in the video gaming medium and one of the reasons why Steam was popular in the first place.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The game is very challenging and has a lot of variety.
 * 2) Greatly rewarding for those that spent a lot of time in the game.
 * 3) Even though the gameboard table looks somewhat generic like any other digital trading card game board, it has three separate gameboards, somewhat that other digital trading card games lack.

Reception
Artifact's announcement generated a lot of negative feedback at a time where there was a massive gap between the time when Valve had made another game in 2013.

The game's reception was well-received from critics and players with praise for the gameplay, although it was heavily criticized for its Pay to Win system, over-reliance on micro-transactions, and lack of player count, bringing light to how Valve has changed as a game publisher.

Because of the previously mentioned issues, the small player count has been slowly leaving in favor of other, far superior card games, resulting in a massive 99% decline in active players within several months of its release and the development team to be downsized to a skeleton crew. However, as of this announcement, they claimed that the game would see a complete overhaul to bring the playerbase back up by the end of the year, but the announcement was poorly received. As of March 2020, they have seemingly abandoned the game, as there is a severe lack of news regarding the mobile ports and updates for the rest of 2019. Valve most likely abandoned the game in favor of other video games or VR projects like Dota Underlords or mh:awesomegames:Half-Life: Alyx. During an interview with IGN in March 2020, Gabe Newell admitted that the game was a "Giant Disappointment", and that Valve is developing a reboot that they are calling "Artifact 2[.0]" due to its large size. This, however, Valve has finally realized there’s no hope for continuing Artifact 2.0, as of March 2021. It will be stopping development altogether and decide to make it Free-to-Play.

Due to the financial flop of the shortest game they made in the corporation's history and the current trend of Auto-chess/Auto battler–which now quickly called–game genre (with a modding team make a game based on the Dota IP, Dota Auto Chess) take a quick rise, it seems that half of the team was quickly moving on creating their own version (which also become the second PC game Valve made) as Dota Underlords, with better success and right requirements than they did in this game.

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