You act like Garfield designed the game in a vacuum and Valve had nothing to do with it.
Who do you think more likely designed things like the progression system and pricing systems? The card game designer or the actual developers at valve.
I mean, one has a history of monetization and creating a revenue cycle out of a game, and the other was talking up how much they were against it in pre interviews. There has to be some kind of coloration.
Would be much weirder for Valve to suddenly want to not be Valve for one specific game.