Damn. I mean, damn. That’s sends a pretty big message to the community… since one of the last things I’ve heard from Valve before going silent a couple months ago was “Wer’re in this for the long haul.”:
Long haul without one of the game’s lead creators.
I guess this is who @Jason_Becker mentioned above?
Whoa, Valve actually hired Richard Garfield as a full-time employee? I didn’t realize that.
-Tom
The article says that he was brought on as a contractor.
How does a contractor “leave” Valve? The first sentence even says he was “laid off”. I guess it’s been so long since I’ve actually had a job that I have no idea how they work.
So this must be the perfect time to go on a buying spree for Artifact cards!
-Tom
Your contract gets cut short before it was due to expire? As a contractor, my notice period was generally around 7 days if the company I worked for decided to terminate the contract earlier than expected.
As for how you leave Valve, you are still employed by the company while fulfilling your contract. You are still part of it, albeit on a temporary basis.
$20 for the base game + up to $54 for the cards card you didn’t unlock with the starter packs that came with the base game will get you a complete set. There’s often 200~300 or so players left playing online at anytime now days, and even fewer per game mode, but at least you’ll be able to predict their strategies once you get to know each of them personally.
Oh hey a post:
Oh no, their attempt to make a low-effort money machine didn’t pan out.
I really do not understand the irrational hate of the business model. People act like dusting cards in Heathstone (or equivalent) isn’t the exact same multi-dipping money mechanic.
Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome.
Post-mortem callout quote.
Dusting cards it completely unrelated to their attempt to monetize the aftermarket for virtual cards infinitely. Can you imagine if WotC collected a percentage of every single private sale of Magic cards between players in the entire world?
If WotC was facilitating every single one of those transactions, yes?
No, it’s not. Dusting cards is deleting a significant amount of your card value, which you replace by buying more cards -> more money for them. Some players will dust/craft cards to keep up with the metagame, which combined with drop rates designed to prevent owning the entire collection is a cycle that results in them endlessly needing more cards and thus spending more money.
Valves scheme allows them to make money forever without needing to sell new cards.
You can play Hearthstone for free just fine, but you can’t do the same with Artifact.
In Hearthstone you can play competitive ladder and casual for free, lots of single player content for free, weekly brawls for free. Arena only costs money if you suck, but it’s free if you manage to win 5~6/12 games every run. But none of that matters for Arena players because they don’t care about building or utilizing their collection in the Arena.
In Hearthstone you can earn packs without spending a dime, then dust those packs and create the decks you want.
These do not compare.
Honestly it was the $20 up front fee that stopped me. If the draft mode where you don’t keep cards had been completely free to try, I would have done so and maybe even spent money. As it was, I held off, since there was no shortage of other games happening and I was still playing MTGA at the time.
Maybe in theory, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still incentivized to develop more cards to keep players interested and keep the game and market healrhy.
Artifact is back. I really liked the game but player base quickly diminished. Weirdly excited about the reboot. Thought the would have given up by now.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-03-21-valve-plots-artifact-reboot