Before the arrival of Half-Life: Alyx this week, Valve's return to new game development was met with a collective shoulder shrug when its "card game set in the DOTA universe" Artifact released in late 2018. From complex design to a questionable monetisation model it wasn't all that well received by critics and the community at large.

In speaking with EDGE Magazine (care of digital sibling GamesRadar+), Valve head honcho Gabe Newell notes that the studio is far from done with Artifact. In fact, it's planning a massive Artifact 2.0 style reboot, "in order to justify its existence to customers and to markets."

"Artifact was an interesting failure in its first go-round. We were surprised. We thought that it was a really strong product," Newell tells Edge. "We ran an experiment, we got a negative result, and now we need to see if we’ve learned anything from that, so let’s try again. And that’s what [the Artifact team] have been doing and that’s what they’re getting ready to release. Based on the reaction to it, what was wrong with the product? How did we get there? Let’s fix those things and take another run at it."

According to the report at Valve the project is being referred to as Artifact 2 -- which bodes well for when it resurface.