Valve announces new card game — and gets big groan from KeyArena crowd and the internet

by on

Valve made a surprise announcement Tuesday about a new game coming in 2018 during The International, the “Dota 2” tournament that it’s hosting at KeyArena in Seattle this week. But a teaser trailer for “The Artifact” didn’t reveal much other than that it’s a card game — and fans in attendance and online reacted as if they were hoping for much more.

VentureBeat called the move a surprise for the Bellevue, Wash.-based video game giant, and said it appears to be Valve’s effort to go after Blizzard Entertainment’s “Hearthstone” and its dominant position atop digital card games.

The collective moan from the crowd at KeyArena, when it was revealed that “Artifact” was a card game and not, perhaps, a long-awaited follow to 2007’s “Half-Life 2” first-person shooter game, was captured in one classic video:

Ars Technica had a little more detail on how the game might work, via broadcaster Sean Plott, whose “brief description hinted at a one-on-one digital card-battling game, like ‘Hearthstone,’ only with a ‘Dota’-themed three-lane system and other ‘Dota’-like tweaks.

Valve developer Brad Muir at least tried to stoke some excitement in what was to come:

But fans online may need a bit more convincing. The teaser on YouTube, above, had more than 14,500 thumbs down to just 2,200 thumbs up as of Wednesday afternoon. And the tweets just kept coming:

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.