Last night, many fans were surprised when they attempted to log in to Marvel SNAP for their login bonuses, only to find that they were unable to do so. As the night continued, it became clear that Marvel SNAP had been rendered unavailable to play or download in the United States, as a result of the law passed banning the TikTok app from all US devices. Last night, around 10PM CST, ByteDance got ahead of the law, which was to go into effect today, Sunday the 19th, by pulling not just TikTok, but all of their apps and games from the US market.
Content creator and sometimes SNAP streamer Jeff Hoogland was among the first to recognize that something was amiss:
It looks like you can’t currently log into Marvel SNAP. It is no longer in the App store and the online webshop is offline. pic.twitter.com/vdLcA80K0n
— Jeff Hoogland (@JeffHoogland) January 19, 2025
Within minutes, the messaging on the app had changed to better reflect the nature of the problem, confirming what many had feared:
The news has apparently come as a shock to the Nuverse company, a subsidiary owned by ByteDance and the publisher of Marvel SNAP, as well as it’s California-based development team, Second Dinner. Second Dinner had this to say on their Twitter account within an hour of the news beginning to circulate:
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…
— Second Dinner (@seconddinner) January 19, 2025
As of this morning, the game is still unavailable. Until it is resolved, not only are Marvel SNAP gamers simply unable to play, but content creators situated in the States that depend on this game to make a living via YouTube videos, Twitch streaming and other sites are completely without revenue generation.
We’ll be posting more on this story as it develops.
UPDATE: As of around 8PM CST, Marvel SNAP has been brought back online and is able to be played once again! Developer Second Dinner appears to have taken the confusion and anger surrounding this sudden outage to heart, posting on their Twitter that they are seeking a new publisher to avoid future concerns:
MARVEL SNAP is back online in the U.S. But to make sure this NEVER happens again, we’re working to bring more services in-house and partner with a new publisher. This is the start of a new era for MARVEL SNAP.
We know this probably leaves you with even more questions than…
— Second Dinner (@seconddinner) January 21, 2025