I’ve been thinking a lot about Artifact as a card game fan, and while we still have a large lack of info surrounding the game, I feel it’s important to discuss distribution models now. Card games are different from your usual video game because the way the individual cards are distributed can effect some of the games mechanics and how it grows as a game in the future, which is important to think about while it’s still in production, rather than when it’s shown to the public.

Speculate all you want, people. We ain’t getting anything until Gabe says so.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Valve ignoring lootboxes?! That’s just a clickbait headline and it’ll never happen!”. For many, a collectable card game without lootboxes or booster packs sounds ridiculous. But stay with me for a bit. I don’t expect Valve to ever give up Unusual items and golden trinkets to try and lure the big buyers in. However, there is a lot we can do around a non-lootbox system with a card game that people don’t realise.

The Original Lootbox

Back in 1993, Magic: The Gathering came out and codified the genre of Trading Card Games, and with it came the “Booster Pack”. Booster Packs have been around with sports cards along with bubblegum, but you never played a intensely competitive game with these. With MTG, things changed. In the beginning it looks like a good way to bring out a set of cards, you buy your starter decks and if you wanted to switch cards in and out you could do so, play with friends on the playground and trade different cards that you might want. However, MTG grew, and it became a competitive game to many players, with a world championship for the best, Friday Night Magic for your local area and various competitions throughout the years. The cards in the booster packs became worth something, because some cards were played in competitive decks, and some cards never saw play and were worth nothing at all. Nowdays, a Standard MTG deck can go from $100 to $300 dollars, with individual cards being over twenty dollars or more. It becomes increasingly hard for players to enter the game due to cost, and it’s a huge hurdle into starting a trading card game.

Despite this knowledge, physical card games still copy this formula, and digital card games copy the physical card games. From Pokemon to Yu-Gi-Oh in the physical world where you are physically shipping a physical product, to the big daddy Hearthstone where you are shipping a digital product. And when we hit the digital world, we have a problem.

Trading Card Games in the digital and physical space is a pay-to-win lootbox. If you buy 100 boosters, you are not guaranteed a competitive deck. You’re not even guaranteed useful cards. You might hit lucky and get the best cards in the set. Or you can get junk. When you combine that with games that do not allow you to trade cards, you end up with a huge money sink. If you can trade, you have the ability to at least buy and sell what you need and the market determines the value of the card. In games like Hearthstone, they set the price of how much a card is worth, and how long it will take for you to buy it, with no way to sell those cards in the future if you leave the game or try another deck.

This is not only fixable, it has already been fixed.

Fantasy Flight Games and other publishers have done away with this in Living Card Games or Expandable Card Games. Games like Android: Netrunner, A Game Of Thrones, and Legend of the Five Rings have no boosters at all.

There is a Core Set with all starting cards. Think of this like an ultra-Starter Pack with every faction for you to build. You can choose whatever style of game or deck meta you want.

There is then Expansion Packs. These are non-randomised packs of cards released once a month (Small Packs can have 20x3=60, Large Packs can have over 100). If you buy that pack, you know what cards are in there. There is no rarities or power difference: all cards are designed to be equal next to each other. There is no “gambling”.

This is what the base game of Artifact should be. Release the Core Set, the initial set of cards, as Free To Play. New sets are released in packs: buy it and get a playable set, or have the cards available individually to craft and trade at a rate that is reasonable. Or better yet, release new sets for free as well. Follow the Dota principle: everything you need to play is already included before you join your first match.

Anything that you buy should be cosmetic only. Full art cards. Shiny gold cards. Artist packs where people from Steam Workshop have their art on the card and they get a portion of the sales. Statistic gems that track how many times I’ve played this card and how much damage it’s dealt. Game mat I bought to support the latest tournament’s prize pool. Card backs and sleeves of the latest packs artwork. Unusual sleeves with fire effects when you draw a card. Arcana cards with explosions and epic music when you play them.

But my deck that has the core set and the latest few expansion packs for less than $5–10 should be able to kick your ass in a fair fight.

Now here comes the common big complaints I hear when I bring this system up.

1) It ruins the meta by evolving it too fast and makes it all about netdecking the one deck to rule them all with nothing else to defeat it.

This is an issue with every card game, regardless of how it is distribution. With the creation of the internet, every card game community has tried to solve the meta faster, especially MTG. Slowing down how cards are distributed doesn’t work; people will simply buy the singles they need on day one of release, leaving those who can’t pay $40 for a single card in the dust with decks that are doomed to be crushed. The other side of the issue is the fear of the “ONE DECK TO RULE THEM ALL”, which is a gameplay issue based around imbalanced cards. Digital cards can be adjusted and nerfed. Not only that, but if they’re free or cheap, you don’t have to worry about people complaining about how they paid $40 for a card only for it to be nerfed into uselessness. A healthy meta is one with multiple types of top tier decks that can be the ying to the other’s yang, and this is easily adjustable by releasing new cards in smaller packs faster or channeling Icefrog and making good cards. Also, no rarity means no cards that are intentionally underpowered.

2) I won’t be able to play off-meta wacky decks with my friends or in ranked/events!

There’s nothing stopping you from playing off-meta and fun decks with your friends, and you’ll be able to do it for far cheaper and with a wider range of factions/card choices. As for ranked and events, if you were going to play with off-meta decks you would be smashed anyway by the large group of people who paid hundreds for their tier 1 deck. You’re complaining about something that would already happen, except now you want people to pay more money so you can lose. Hmmm.

3) I want my collection to be worth something!

That is what cosmetics are for. Buy every full art card in the game and show the opponent that you are the biggest fan of Axe.

4) What about rewards for winning events?

That is what cosmetics are for. Win every full art card in the game and show the opponent that you won Artifact International 2019.

5) I want to play sealed/draft: no boosters means no draft!

Hearthstone has Draft (Arena) where you don’t get to keep the cards you draft. This is a digital card game: they can create fake booster packs like in Hearthstone for free whenever they want. Android Netrunner also has a draft system, and that’s a LCG.

6) Valve won’t make money from only selling cosmetics.

Look at Dota 2. Look at CS:GO. Look at TF2.

Valve makes money almost exclusively from cosmetics from their games. If the game is good and gets a community, they will buy cosmetics. It has been proven time and time again that people will pay for prestige, and will always pay for it.

7) Should cosmetics be lootboxes?

Oh boy, here we go. Personally? I think people will pay $5 for the entire set of cosmetics rather than $1 for a chance at 1 in 5. We still don’t see Arcanas selling in lootboxes. I think Valve could possibly even sell unusuals straight from them to the public if they wanted to.

But Valve is also a business, and cosmetic lootboxes done in a proper way has worked for Valve for so long that I don’t see them stepping away from it. Instead, I see a Dota 2 style-system where you get every card for free in a regular standard bordered style, and a treasure chest system where you pay $2.50 for 1 playset out of 7 of full art cards made by the community (Opening multiple copies of the same treasure guarantees a different item is unboxed every time), with an rare chance to get sleeves and an ultra rare chance to get Unusual Flaming Sleeves. Throw in some Arcana cards for $10 that do cool animations and make the Steam Marketplace trade any cards you don’t want. It’s tried, trusted, and works.

That is not to say we can’t dream. I think trialing a non-lootbox option at least for release may bring more people into the game initially, which is important as the digital card game is a crowded market. Ultimately, the biggest draw will be in the execution of the gameplay and mechanics. Whether Valve decides to make the full game competitively fair and balanced or they cut out power cards behind pay-to-win boosters is their decision, and for the sake of the starting growth of the community I hope it’s the former.