You may remember Artifact as Valve’s entry into the digital card game market, with plans to have no moderation and no way of obtaining cards for free. That did not seem like a smart idea, but the game went into its beta testing after delays, and it turns out players were… oh, no, they weren’t on board, they’ve actually been pretty incensed about the business model. So Valve is tweaking it now, at least slightly.
Players will be able to try out a practice version of the game’s Draft format without requiring an event ticket (which costs real money), and a later build will allow you to earn event tickets by trading in duplicate cards (which, again, cost real money). Only time will tell if this leads to further business changes based on community feedback, but it doesn’t seem that a buy-to-play title with buy-in for more cards is exactly lighting fans on fire in practice.
