Valve’s Artifact launches to mixed reviews on Steam

Late last night, Valve officially launched Artifact and while the servers initially struggled to keep up with the influx in players, connectivity smoothed out fairly quickly. Still, it seems that plenty of players have their share of complaints, as evidenced by the mixed reception on Steam.

Currently, Artifact has close to 2,000 reviews on Steam, with the overall opinion being listed as ‘mixed'. Most players seem to be in agreement over the fact that Artifact is a very good, fun and in-depth card game. However, the pricing model seems to be putting a chunk of players off.

While many other card games are typically free to play, Artifact has a £15 buy-in, which nets you the game, two starter decks, five event tickets and ten additional card packs to open. However, once you are in the game, there are no daily challenges or login rewards for players to earn new cards. These are features that lots of players have gotten used to in titles like Hearthstone, allowing those with less money to still add to their collection without buying more packs.

The other main sticking point is that competitive play costs an event ticket, which needs to be paid for after your initial five run out. If you manage to win three games before losing two, then you'll get an event ticket and card pack as a reward. You can also recycle any duplicate cards you have to generate a new event ticket, so there are ways around buying tickets, but to recycle cards, you'll likely need to be buying enough packs to obtain those duplicates.

It is a drastically different system to the digital card games we have grown used to over the years since Hearthstone launched. However, if you compare it to physical trading card games like Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic The Gathering or even Pokémon, then the monetisation system will seem very familiar.

KitGuru Says: I've already had the chance to play a few hours of Artifact and I really enjoy the game. The monetisation system doesn't really bother me, but I can see why new players might be put off. The lack of option for earning new card packs through gold, login rewards, daily challenges etc makes the game less accessible to those with less money to invest. Have any of you tried Artifact yet? How do you feel about the game so far? 

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