Marvel Snap
While the closure of one of America’s most used social media apps, TikTok, is all anyone can talk about right now, an under-reported aspect of the story is that it all apps from its parent company, ByteDance. That includes things like video editing app CapCut, but as gamers learned late Sunday, it also includes… Marvel Snap?
Marvel Snap is a digital card game developed by Second Dinner, so how did you get a stray here? Well, ByteDance was the publisher of Marvel Snap. There was a somewhat ugly situation in 2023, when ByteDance divested from gaming subsidiary Nuverse as part of a “restructuring” of its gaming business. However, Marvel Snap has continued to operate since then, despite ByteDance’s exit, but it looks like they’re still technically the publisher for this to happen.
But whatever is going on here, they took Snap offline before the company was banned with these other apps, even though they supposedly got out of the gaming business. When players try to log in, they are greeted with an almost identical message that TikTokers are showing which says:
“Sorry, MARVEL SNAP is currently unavailable.
A law banning MARVEL SNAP has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, this means you can’t use MARVEL SNAP for now. Rest assured, we are working to restore our service in the US.”
The message
Contrary to a variation of the TikTok message, there is no mention of incoming President Donald Trump, who ByteDance believes will strike a deal with them to bring TikTok back online in the US. And if that happens, then all those other apps will populate again, including Marvel Snap, presumably.
It’s a deeply strange situation as most gamers probably didn’t know that ByteDance had anything to do with Marvel Snap, as the face of the game is California-based studio Second Dinner. Again, ByteDance was supposedly divested from Nuverse and Snap, but is still somehow confused on the web.
I am currently looking into other games that may be affected by this ban, based on Nuverse or other ByteDance affiliate projects. Some of these games like Warhammer 40,000: Lost Crusade have already been shut down, and Marvel Snap so far seems like the highest profile game to escape this whole situation.
Essentially if TikTok is back, so is Marvel Snap. It’s an extra complicated situation because it was easy to spend tens, hundreds, or even thousands of dollars on Snap if you were a big enough fan, and now it’s just… gone? While TikTok is the biggest story here, for sure, this is a completely unexpected and strange development in the world of gaming, and we’ll be watching as it continues to unfold.
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