Valve’s first new game in 5 years, Artifact, coming in November, starting at $20

Enlarge / One of many pieces of art commissioned for the cards in Artifact, coming to Steam in November of this year. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

Valve Software's first brand-new video game since 2013, the digital card-dueling game Artifact, finally has a release date: November 28.

This is the first Valve game since Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to launch with a fixed release price as opposed to the free-to-play model enjoyed by Valve games like Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2. Anyone who wants to play Artifact will need to buy the game's base model at $19.99, which will be available on all Steam platforms-meaning Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

What exactly does $19.99 get you? The game maker didn't answer this in its press release, so we reached out to Valve's Doug Lombardi, who broke down the exact package included in that cost: two pre-made "base" decks of 54 cards each ("5 heroes, 9 items, and 40 other cards") and 10 sealed packs of cards, which each include 12 random cards, one of which is guaranteed to be "rare." Additional 12-card packs will be sold directly by Valve at $2 a pop at launch.

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