Det er altid stort når Valve afslører et nyt spil, og der var da også relativt meget positiv energi blandt fans da de løftede sløret for CCG-spillet Artifact, et spil der foregår i Dota 2-universet, og som skulle udnytte den popularitet vi ser i blandt andet Hearthstone.
Men sådan gik det ikke. Kort efter lanceringen i november 2018 faldt spilletantallet drastisk, indtil der kun var under 1000 aktive spillere. Dette fik Valve til at påbegynde udviklingen af "Artifact 2.0", en slags redning, men det er simpelthen ikke gået.
I bedste Anthem-stil har Valve i stedet valgt at droppe udviklingen af den nye version, og har gjort Artifact gratis i stedet. Dette har de skrevet på Steam.
<em>"It's now been about a year and a half since the current Artifact team began work on a reboot in earnest. 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.
However, we recognize that both versions of Artifact still have players and still have value to the community. For this reason, we're opening both games up to make them available for free to everyone. Final releases of both Artifact Classic and Artifact 2.0 Beta (renamed Artifact Foundry) are now available. Technically Artifact Foundry remains an unfinished product, but most of what's missing is polish and art - the core gameplay is all there. While both games will remain playable, we don't plan to ship any further gameplay updates.
Sadly, even though Valve tried to fix the problems, it just didn't work out. "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", said the developer team. "As such, we've made the tough decision to stop development on the Artifact 2.0 Beta."
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