The popular digital card game Marvel Snap was unexpectedly affected by the US ban on TikTok. The game is back online now, but it may not stay that way.
The original ban, part of a law called the Protecting Americans from Censored Apps from Foreign Adversaries Act, began on January 19, 2025 to ban TikTok. Because Marvel Snap’s publisher, Nuverse, is owned by ByteDance (which owns TikTok), the game is now unavailable to players in the US. This caused a two-day outage, during which players were unable to access the game, leading to frustration among fans. The developer, Second Dinner, said the outage caught them by surprise, and it is working to resolve the issue.
The future of Marvel Snap depends on ByteDance divesting (at least part of) TikTok to another company, the US lifting the ban, or selling Nuverse to another company. If TikTok goes down again, Marvel Snap will go with it. The argument advanced by the new administration is that it is important to save jobs in the United States and not give them to China. I was a TikTok moderator during the coronavirus crisis, so I know there are plenty of jobs in the US for the company’s workers. However, we knew that Germany was a place where US videos were moderated as well, so not all of TikTok’s functionality is here in the US, at least during the coronavirus crisis.
The future of Marvel Snap may depend on TikTok’s owners approving this deal, but the developers are already working on fixing that. “Marvel Snap is back online in the US but to make sure it doesn’t happen again, we’re working on bringing more services in-house and partnering with a new publisher,” Ben Broad, Second Dinner’s chief development officer, announced on the game’s official Discord. The ban will not go back into effect for at least three months, allowing time for many changes to be made, but it will take some time to see.
When President Donald Trump took office, he signed an executive order temporarily halting implementation of the ban on TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps for 75 days. This pause allowed Marvel Snap to return to US players, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens as this pause continues.
source: Wall Street Journalwhite house (1, 2), Marvel Snap Discord