After nearly three years in development, Valve has officially halted any further development of the Dota 2-based collectible card game, Artifact.
Valve made the news official with a blog post titled "The Future of Artifact". There, they cited the game's poor player count following its 2018 launch. They also explained that the low number of active players made it hard to justify to continue development on the game's reboot, which has since been renamed to Artifact Foundry. Valve Makes Artifact Free-to-Play
Valve President Gabe Newell had initially stated that, upon launch, they would not make the game free-to-play like its competitors, as well as the title it is based on, Dota 2. In doing so, Newell hoped that it would help avoid leading to a "pay-to-win" scenario. He most likely didn't want the players with the most money to spend to end up winning most of the time.
Newell even went as far as to say that he wished for Artifact to become the Half-Life 2 of card games.
Unfortunately, with the development now halted, it seems like that no longer is possible.
If it's any consolation though, this move does come with some bittersweet news: Artifact is being made free-to-play for everyone. In addition to this, Valve has also made all cards accessible to everyone for free. They've also removed card packs from the market as a result. This means that everyone is free to try our Artifact now in its entirety.