BioWare isn’t the only studio throwing in the towel after attempting a reboot of a promising title. Fans of Valve’s digital card game Artifact were dismayed to hear this week that the company has decided to end work on Artifact 2.0, cease development altogether, and move the title into maintenance mode.
“It’s now been about a year and a half since the current Artifact team began work on a reboot in earnest,” Valve posted. “While we’re reasonably satisfied we accomplished most of our game-side goals, we haven’t managed to get the active player numbers to a level that justifies further development at this time. As such, we’ve made the tough decision to stop development on the Artifact 2.0 Beta.”
The company said that it’s making both Artifact and Artifact 2.0 Beta (now Artifact Foundry) available for free with no further development or updates. As all players will get all cards, no packs are going to be sold from here on out.
Artifact came out in November 2018 in an attempt to carve out some of that lucrative digital card game market. However, it was a near-instant flop, losing players left and right while giving Valve a very public black eye. The studio even jettisoned creator Richard Garfield that next March and then pledged a wholesale reboot of the title — a reboot that will never be fully realized.
