Marvel Snap developer Second Dinner hopes to have the card battler back online “within 24 hours” after it was made unavailable in the United States due to the studio’s links with TikTok owner ByteDance.
“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. We’ll update you once it’s back up,” reads the latest social media post from the studio.
The title went dark on Sunday, with Second Dinner confirming the news on X while pledging to remedy the situation as soon as possible.
“Unfortunately, Marvel Snap is temporarily unavailable in U.S. app stores and is unavailable to play in the U.S.,” wrote the developer. “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.”
Players who attempted to boot up the title were greeted with a message explaining it has been banned in the United States.
“Sorry, Marvel Snap isn’t available right now,” it read, as reported by IGN. “A law banning Marvel Snap has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use Marvel Snap for now. Rest assured, we’re working to restore our service in the U.S. Please stay tuned!”
Marvel Snap caught in the crossfire after TikTok ban
Marvel Snap is published by Nuverse, a subsidiary of TikTok owner ByteDance. It looks like that connection is now causing trouble for Marvel Snap and developer Second Dinner after a new U.S. law banning TikTok came into effect over the weekend.
That law prevents people in the United States from using the popular social media app and was purportedly ushered in over concerns about its links to the Chinese government.
As reported by the BBC, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision on Friday after ByteDance failed to sell TikTok to a company in the United States before January 19, 2025.
Although the ban was upheld, President-elect Donald Trump claims he will “likely” give ByteDance and TikTok a 90-day reprieve after he takes office on January 20.
In the meantime, Second Dinner co-founder and chief development officer Ben Brode indicated players in the U.S. can use a VPN to circumvent the ban.
“I am hearing that VPN software will allow you to continue playing Marvel Snap in the meantime, as long as you pretend you’re from Canada or something,” he noted on Bluesky.
It was previously reported that ByteDance was restructuring its video game business and discussing a potential asset sale with Chinese conglomerate Tencent, which was recently added to a list of “Chinese military companies” by the U.S. Department of Defence.
ByteDance confirmed it “made the difficult decision to restructure our gaming business” in November 2023, but it remains unclear which subsidiaries were impacted.