Valve announces details of Artifact & $1 million tournament

Valve just held a private press conference about their first card game Artifact.

According to sources from IGN and PCGamesN, the two sides appeared at Valve’s office in Bellevue, the game will be released in late 2018 and will have a million dollar tournament in the first quarter of 2019.

Richard Garfield, founder of Magic: The Gathering, designed Artifact

Artifact is still in closed beta. Only a few people in the industry and close to the game have access to the game. However, during the meeting on March 7, Valve president Gabe Newell revealed 7 new details about the much-awaited card game. One of the most interesting pieces of information is that Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, is the designer of the Artifact game.

I am currently at Valve playing Artifact. It is an extremely unique and fun take on a digital CCG! Valve still seriously knows how to make games.

Also they keep it hidden until now Richard Garfield is the designer behind it! pic.twitter.com/TwMbiFkgJa

— Tom Marks (@TomRMarks) 9 March 2018

This is not a free game

This is probably not good news for Valve fans. Artifact won’t be a free-to-play game, but details on how the game generates revenue have yet to be released. However, from what little information is available, it seems likely that the card trade will take place on the Steam market and the profits from the revenue will be donated to Artifact tournaments.

Artifact will be available on mobile devices

This will be the first Source 2 game available on mobile devices and tablets. According to information during the meeting, Artifact will be available on iOS and Android in mid-2019.

Artifact is a Source 2 game and will be on mobile.

The game will be played across 3 lanes like Dota with heroes and creeps battling it out across the battlefield. #PlayArtifact pic.twitter.com/2VQTZ5pv00

— Wykrhm Reddy (@wykrhm) 9 March 2018

Artifact will have Dota 2 heroes coming out in the future

While there aren’t many details on the release date, Artifact will initially have 280 cards and 44 heroes, including future Dota 2 heroes. According to IGN, Gabe Newell said Artifact will create more content for Dota 2 as “new heroes appearing in Dota” will appear in the previous card game.

One of the key aspects of Artifact is that it’s not just a card version of Dota 2. It obviously includes mechanics from Dota, like three lanes that have to be pushed until you get to your opponent’s Ancient. method, the buying phase for players to use gold to buy the items they need, Artifact will only use Dota 2 as a reference.

Learn more about Artifact

From the images that we have at the meeting, here are the information that can be extracted:

• Out of a total of 4 card colors, each deck can only have 2 colors
• Some cards affect all three lanes
• The board consists of three lanes (similar to Dota 2) and players must play all three lanes at the same time
• Each player will have 5 heroes divided into 3 lanes
• Each hero can have 3 items – one for attack value, one for armor, and one for health
• Items that can affect turrets
• When dying, the hero’s respawn time will be displayed on the upper left corner of the screen
• To win the game: kill 2 out of 3 enemy lanes or destroy their Ancient
• Turrets have 40 HP, while Ancients have 80 HP