How Valve Won’t Let Artifact’s Marketplace Get Crazy Expensive

Artifact, the next game from Half-Life developer Valve, is decidedly bucking digital card game trends. Not only is it not free-to-play, it’s not going to have any kind of free in-game currency to spend on cards -- a decision Valve tells me is to avoid the grind that can make other CCGs feel like a job instead of a game.
“At its core, we want you to play the game because you enjoy playing the game,” programmer Brandon Reinhart told me when I visited Valve last week. They don&rsq