Valve Addresses Some, But Not All, of People's Problems with Artifact

The more we’ve learned about Valve’s upcoming card game, Artifact, the more people dislike it. The mechanics are complicated and people have applauded the high skill ceiling, which is just about the only good news you’ll hear about the game. Otherwise, the discussion is dominated by the enormous greed being displayed by Valve. Specifically, in how you need to “pay for everything”, as it’s 20 dollars alone to get the game, all packs afterward cost $2, there’s no way to trade cards (but you can buy/sell them on the Steam Marketplace, where valve takes a cut), and if you want to participate in any of the special modes where you can earn packs, you have to pay for a ticket first. Worse of all, since you can get “basic” cards in packs, it’s very possible that outside the one guaranteed “Hero” card in each pack, you get a bunch of useless stuff that you won’t even be able to sell.

Needless to say, people aren’t charmed. It combines the worst parts of physical card games and digital ones, and creates a marketplace where Valve can earn lots of money and players can bite rocks. Valve seems to have picked up on this outrage, and have released a blog post that addresses some, but not all, of players concerns.

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.

It’s not a very convincing address, but it technically does that: they promise that in the next beta build, they’ll have more ways for players to play together, make it possible to “practice” the paid modes before you buy a ticket, and add a recycling system where you can scrap old cards for event tickets.

So that’s a small improvement over a game that has mountain-sized issues. I’m not sure it’ll get people to renew their pre-orders but it means people who are too lazy to do that are going to have a slightly better time.