What you need to know
- Artifact first released in November 2018 as a digital card game that pulled from the world of DOTA 2.
- A major planned overhaul, referred to as Artifact 2.0 and now Artifact Foundry, was in the pipeline but work has stopped.
- Both Artifact and Artifact Foundry are now free to play, with no further updates planned for either version of the game.
In 2018, Valve released a digital card game called Artifact that drew on the world of popular free to play title DOTA 2, not unlike how Blizzard Entertainment's Hearthstone uses the world of Warcraft as a basis. Today, Valve announced that the plans to overhaul Artifact, referred to as Artifact 2.0 and later Artifact Foundry, have ceased.
Both Artifact and Artifact Foundry will remain playable but neither version of the game will receive any future updates. Both games will also be completely free to play, with Valve noting that "In short, when we say "free", we really mean "free."" Any paid events have been removed, while paid players cards are being upgraded into Collector's Edition versions of the same cards and the ability to buy card packs has also been removed.
Despite the current rate of its software output, Valve is an acclaimed PC developer and publisher, having been responsible for some of the best PC games of all time. While this decision is certain to upset players who were looking forward to future updates and changes, at least both games will stay playable as they are for now.
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