How long since Valve made a new game, let alone with a new title? Aside from The Lab, a VR experience, their last shipped game on the PC was Dota 2, released in 2013. And after four years of silence on the development front, they have announced a new game in the works called Artifact.
Artifact, the Dota card game.
The game was announced during The International 2017, the annual Dota 2 tournament that has now has a prize pool of more than $20 million USD. A teaser trailer was shown which you can watch here:
As you can see from the like/dislike ratio of the video on Youtube, not many fans are happy with this announcement. Same goes to the reaction elsewhere in social media.
We waited so long for a new game and what they did was a card game based on another IP? There are a lot of card games based on other IPs currently- Blizzard’s Hearthstone is leading the pack on this one, with Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls Legends trailing behind them and CD Projekt RED’s Gwent- based on card game within The Witcher universe, coming soon. To most people, having another one of these feel like a cash grab.
However, there is no gameplay footage shown just yet. We won’t know for sure if Artifact is a just a cash grab or a genuinely fresh card game that happens to use the Dota IP.
Artifact will be out sometime in 2018.