Marvel Snap is unexpectedly unavailable following the US TikTok ban

The US has been bracing for the upcoming TikTok ban for months, but no one (even the developers) expected popular mobile game, Marvel Snap, to be caught in the crossfire.

Matt Buckley

1

Source: Marvel Snap, developer: Second Dinner Studios

Following the US TikTok ban, another popular app became unexpectedly unavailable in the US: Marvel Snap. The digital card game is developed by US-based studio Second Dinner but is published by China-based game company Nuverse, which is a subsidiary of Byte Dance, the owner of TikTok.

Marvel Snap is an unexpected casualty of the US TikTok ban

The US government’s ban of TikTok has been in the works for a long time. The day finally arrived on Sunday, January 19th, and TikTok officially became unavailable for US users. For some reason, this appears to have also caused several other apps to be banned as well, including the highly popular digital card game, Marvel Snap. Users have shared their inability to access the game on mobile devices and through Steam.

The developer of Snap, Second Dinner, posted to X/Twitter, explaining that

Unfortunately, Marvel Snap is temporarily unavailable in U.S. app stores and is unavailable to play in the U.S. This outage is a surprise to us and wasn’t planned. Marvel Snap isn’t going anywhere. We’re actively working on getting the game up as soon as possible and will update you once we have more to share.

At the time of writing, the game has yet to be reinstated in the US, though TikTok has returned. For fans of the game, all hope is not lost. The developer seems confident enough to say that the game is only “temporarily unavailable,” rather than outright banned.

It is still unclear exactly why Marvel Snap was affected by this US-based TikTok ban, and it’s especially strange that this came as a shock to the game’s developers. In their statement about the outage, the developers do not mention TikTok or the ban at any point, but it seems strange that this could be a coincidence. As this is a developing situation, we will have to see if there are any updates in the coming days.

Marvel Snap

October 18, 2022

PC Mobile
Rate It!
Like it?

1

Matt Buckley

Author: Matt Buckley

After studying creative writing at Emerson College in Boston, Matt published a travel blog based on a two-month solo journey around the world, wrote for SmarterTravel, and worked on an Antarctic documentary series for NOVA, Antarctic Extremes. Today, for Gamepressure, Matt covers Nintendo news and writes reviews for Switch and PC titles. Matt enjoys RPGs like Pokemon and Breath of the Wild, as well as fighting games like Super Smash Bros., and the occasional action game like Ghostwire Tokyo or Gods Will Fall. Outside of video games, Matt is also a huge Dungeons & Dragons nerd, a fan of board games like Wingspan, an avid hiker, and after recently moving to California, an amateur surfer.