It’s been more than a year since Valve’s Dota 2-based card game, Artifact, has received any updates.

This is a little bit like beating a literal dead horse, but in case you were wondering, Artifact is dead. In fact, there’s a website dedicated precisely to this sole subject and it very clearly indicates the state of Artifact as “dead.” And the internet would never lie about these sorts of things.

If you’re a little more skeptical of random websites, then you can use another metric: it’s been over a year since Artifact received its last update. According to the game’s Steam page, the last update occurred on January 28th, 2019, and brought a bunch of bug fixes and balance changes to the game’s struggling economy.

One of the reasons (or perhaps THE reason, depending on who you ask) for Artifact’s dismal failure was the game’s economy. When Artifact first released, new cards could only be purchased or gained as a reward in certain drafting game modes that required the purchase of a ticket to participate. No cards were given out for free after the initial packs you received upon purchasing the game, and players weren’t allowed to trade cades on an open market. That meant there was no possibility of progressing without spending money.

Richard Garfield, the famous game designer who also created Magic: The Gathering, didn’t see a problem with this setup as it’s basically the same as real-life card games: you can’t get more cards unless you pay for them. Unfortunately, video games aren’t the same as physical trading card games, and most Artifact players abandoned the game after it became clear they’d need to spend way more money than they cared to.

Garfield still blames review bombs for Artifact becoming the first real flop in Valve history.

After it became clear that nobody was playing the game, Artifact was shelved with Valve stating that they would cease updates in order to address Artifact’s deeply flawed systems. One year later and it looks like Valve is still trying.

Or maybe they’re just a little more focused on something that might succeed. Half-Life Alyx is set to release in March and it has already caused the Washington-based developer to double its sales of Index VR headsets.

Source: Reddit, Steam, GamesIndustry.biz