When TikTok was temporarily blocked in the US over the weekend, one of the unexpected knock-on effects was the simultaneous banning of Marvel Snap, the CCG that stars the usual group of powerhouse American superheroes. Access to TikTok was restored after 12 hours, but the game remained offline for another 12 hours.
Now it’s back (at least on PC: at the time of writing it’s still out on smartphones), which is good news for Californian studio Second Dinner and fans of card games and superheroes in general. But this may not be good news for Marvel Snap’s publisher, Nuverse, which is a subsidiary of TikTok owner ByteDance and, as a result, is clearly the source of this mess this card game has become embroiled in.
In his own ad on XSecond Dinner was extremely specific: “MARVEL SNAP returns online in the US. However, to make sure this NEVER happens again, we are working on bringing more services in-house and partnering with a new publisher,” the official Second Dinner account said on Twitter.
“This is the beginning of a new era for MARVEL SNAP. We know this will likely leave even more questions than answers. We appreciate your patience, but in the meantime, have fun playing MARVEL SNAP.”
Maybe it’s just my impression, but it’s very rare for a studio to signal its intention to leave a publisher while still – given the wording – in a working relationship with it. However, these are unusual circumstances, and Nuverse and ByteDance are not off the hook yet: US President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social yesterday that TikTok’s return to the US is merely an extension of “the period before legal bans take effect.”
During this extension, President Trump will seek a “50% stake” in TikTok for the US. If a deal is not struck – and we currently have no idea what kind of deal it might be, whether between a private US company and ByteDance or the US government itself – there is a good chance that TikTok could disappear again and, as a result, everything else that falls under the Nuverse mantle.
Marvel Snap is playable, but at the time of writing, in-app purchases “remain unavailable,” though they are expected to return soon.
