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Superhero card game Marvel Snap has been taken offline in the USA as part of the US government’s ban-or-divest policy towards ByteDance, the Chinese company best known for owning and operating shortform video-streaming service TikTok.
As reported by The Verge, mobile players in the US lost access to the Marvel Snap app without warning on last Saturday 18th January. The game is still listed on Steam, but people are reporting that they can’t log in. California-based developers Second Dinner have promised, however, that it’ll be playable again in the States within 24 hours.
To briefly fill in the background, the US government have a bone to pick with ByteDance because they think the company’s various online services are a national security risk. TikTok is, of course, a mammoth international hit, used by 170 million people in the USA alone. The US Senate and other lawmakers argue that the platform is a means for the Chinese state to harvest details about US citizens, while using TikTok’s algorithms to influence their views. TikTok insist that they harbour no such agenda, arguing that they only store US user data outside China in Singapore.
In a bill passed by the US Congress back in March 2024, representatives finally ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US-based company this month, or lose access to the entire US market. ByteDance have refused, taken the US government to court, and now suspended access to TikTok after their appeal was denied by the Senate. As part of that, Marvel Snap – whose publisher Nuverse is owned by ByteDance – has been given the cosh. This appears to be a more fleeting interruption, however.
“In a surprise to Second Dinner and our publisher Nuverse, MARVEL SNAP was affected by the takedown of TikTok late on Saturday, January 18th,” reads a tweet from this Sunday.
“We’ve been working around the clock to bring MARVEL SNAP back up in the U.S. and hope to have it back online within 24 hours,” reads another tweet from about eight hours ago. “We’ll update you once it’s back up. In the meantime, global players should be able to continue to play with no issues.”
Confusingly, other Nuverse games such as Ragnarok X: 3rd Anniversary and Earth: Revival – Deep Underground are still available on the US App Store, according to the Verge. I’m not sure whether Second Dinner or Nuverse will need to wrangle with the US government to resurrect Marvel Snap. Perhaps it’s more of an accidental, administrative knock-on effect from the TikTok ban.
While the TikTok outage doesn’t affect the games industry directly, it’s obviously significant news for tech in general and a nasty blow for video game streamers. People have been sorrowfully uploading their best TikTok clips to other platforms.
Here’s hoping you Marvel Snappers can resume snapping marvellously very soon. We’ve never reviewed the Steam edition, but Matt Cox (RPS in peace) is/was a fan.
Kurt Indovina
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