Valve Releases A Statement About Artifact’s Current Issues

Valve’s Artifact went into open beta today, but not everyone is happy with how the game is working out at the moment. The issue seems to stem from two main areas. The first is that Valve didn’t quite predict what players would deem as essential features. The second is that the monetization of the game leaves a lot to be desired.

Valve’s Artifact went into open beta today, but not everyone is happy with how the game is working out at the moment. The issue seems to stem from two main areas. The first is that Valve didn’t quite predict what players would deem as essential features. The second is that the monetization of the game leaves a lot to be desired.

Artifact will cost $20 at launch, which is not a bad price for a new game. From there, things get a little iffy. The only way to get new cards is to buy booster packs at $2 a pop, or buy and sell cards through the marketplace. Finally, cards can be won, but only by playing modes that require paid-for tickets to enter. Cards cannot be traded, so if you get a duplicate, you cannot merely swap with friends.

Where the model falls apart is that booster packs can give you cards you already got in the starter set. This is a potential replication of cards that you are already guaranteed to have. You can’t sell them, because everyone else has them, and you can’t do anything else with them either. As such, you can spend money that ends up being wasted, and you are always forced to buy or sell cards in a marketplace that Valve takes a cut from. It all adds up to seeming pretty cash-grabby on Valve’s part.

Things get even more complicated when it comes to winning cards. Cards can be won by playing the game’s Expert Constructed or Phantom Draft mode, which both cost one ticket to enter. A third mode, Keeper Draft Gauntlets, will require two tickets and five packs to play. To get packs, and win your tickets back, you need to win a series of games against opponents that get tougher and tougher. It is, apparently, a very tough mode, and if you lose two games, that is it, gauntlet over. The bad news is that you couldn’t even practice the mode, you had to spend the price of entry.

Valve released a blogpost this morning, highlighting changes they plan on making to the game based on the community feedback.

Since lifting the NDA on the private beta yesterday, there’s been an overwhelming amount of feedback on all parts of the game. Much of that feedback has been a clear signal that we underestimated how much interest and excitement the community has around certain features that weren’t available in the initial beta build.

We want to take a few minutes to talk about some of those missing features now:

• There was no way to do a draft event with friends. We didn’t prioritize this play mode, and had planned to enable it sometime after release. We’ve heard your feedback: drafting with friends is a core part of what you want to spend your time doing in Artifact. In the next Artifact beta build, you can select Call To Arms Phantom Draft in any user-created tournament.
• There was no way to practice the draft modes without spending an event ticket.Drafting is incredibly fun, but can also be very intimidating. We agree that it’s important to have a way to practice before venturing into a more competitive mode. In the next Artifact beta build, everyone who has claimed their starting content will find a Casual Phantom Draft gauntlet available in the Casual Play section.
• There was nothing to do with duplicate starter heroes. We’re adding a system that allows extra, unwanted cards to be recycled into event tickets. This feature will ship before the end of the beta period.

The first two changes will be live for everyone when the public beta activates later today. We’ll ship the recycling system, as well as other improvements to the beta, over the next week and a half.

So while it seems that Valve is working hard to improve the experience for people, and get their development efforts in line with community expectation, the question about monetization still very much remains. We will keep you updated on this story as more information comes out.