Releasing in 2018, Valve debuted its own take on the digital collectible card genre known as Artifact, with the game based in the same universe as Dota 2. Despite a promising start, the title was poorly received by the Steam community, which criticized its poor implementation of microtransactions and lack of meaningful progression systems. The complaints lead to Valve promising it would overhaul the project, beginning work on a reboot known as Artifact 2.0.

Today, Valve announced it has decided to discontinue its work on Artifact's revival, telling fans via Steam that the size of the game's playerbase doesn't justify the development time being poured into Artifact 2.0's beta. The studio has decided to make both Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry free for all users on Steam, alongside removing the title's card packs from sale.

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It's not all bad news for frequenters of the title, with Valve promising to do right by the small community that continues to support the game. Going forward, players on Artifact Classic will get every card for free, while those who paid for packs in the past will notice their decks are now filled with collector's edition versions of the cards they pulled. Anyone who purchased the title will also continue to earn collector's edition cards while playing. As for Artifact Foundry, players won't get all the cards from the offset like in Classic, but they'll be able to acquire them as they play the game. All the final card art that was in the works has also been added to Foundry.

It's an unfortunate end for Artifact, but one that comes after plenty of struggles for Valve's controversial project. Although the game launched with impressive sales numbers and a good reception from critics, it quickly garnered backlash due to the pricing of its microtransactions, with players reporting cards that cost more than the game itself. The game's disappointing release was even acknowledged openly by Valve, with Gabe Newell calling the game an "interesting failure" in an interview with Edge Magazine last year.

It seemed the team wanted to deliver on the promise of Artifact through its revamp, but dwindling player numbers have marked the end of the road for the failed card game. Following the release of Artifact, Valve has gone on to work on two titles, with Dota Underlords and Half-Life: Alyx dropping in 2019 and 2020 respectively. The latter was a huge hit for the team, being looked at as a must-play showcase of VR technology and a satisfying return to the Half-Life universe.

Artifact 2.0 is available now on PC.

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Sources: Edge (via GamesRadar), PC Gamer