Valve is Certain that $500 Artifact Decks Won't Be a Thing

Earlier this week, your friends and occasional romantic rivals at PC Gamer played a few rounds of Artifact with Valve, and during their match, they discussed many things regarding the upcoming digital TCG. But the only subject we really care about – and the one that has the gaming world “nervous” – is monetization. Unlike most recent TCG, Artifact is not free-to-play. Instead, you have to put down 20 bucks for the game itself, and then you have to actually buy packs of cards if you want anything more than the base deck. You can also buy and sell individual cards on the marketplace.

…And you can see why this might be a problem, which PC gamer pointed out: with this system, it should be very possible to simply buy the best deck and steamroll people who can’t afford the best cards. A notion Valve was quick to dismiss… because… reasons?

Specifically, Designer Skaff Elias said this:

"If there’s one expensive deck, maybe there will also be ten cheap decks. We definitely want to make sure [Artifact is] a reasonable price for people to play. We would not want to see all the decks be $500 decks. It’s just not going to happen."

While gameplay programmer Brad Muir said this:

"The original philosophy of 'rarity does not equal power level' is more pronounced here. I think there will be decks that have a decent number of commons and uncommons inside of them. The case of common cards, they’ll be so abundant that the price [of those cards] will have a hard time getting off the floor."

I can see the benefits of an open card market because, in a well-moderated economy where scammers and fraudsters are kept in check, it allows freedom and gives people the chance to get the exact card they want for their decks – kinda like in real life. And any step away from loot boxes is a good one, in my eyes.

But then again, this is Valve.

And it’s kind of hard for me to put much faith into them.