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Marvel Snap aims to be back up in the United States within 24 hours [UPDATED]

Caught in the sweeping TikTok ban, Second Dinner has a rough estimate for when Marvel Snap players in the United States can expect to play again. [Update: It's back!]

Ozzie Mejia

January 19, 2025 6:45 PM

Marvel Studios

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UPDATED (Last Edit: January 20, 2025 @ 7:08 p.m. PT): Marvel Snap is back online in the United States. Second Dinner put out the following statement as American services were restored:

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 answers. We appreciate your patience, but in the meantime enjoy playing Marvel Snap.

We’ll continue to update with more information as soon as possible!

Second Dinner's pledge to find a new publisher comes several months after original publisher Nuverse announced that it would begin winding down in the wake of parent company ByteDance exiting the gaming sector.

Original story: This has not been a fun weekend for the Marvel Snap player base in the United States, nor has it been one for developer Second Dinner. As TikTok went offline in the United States, so too did anything that had ByteDance's fingerprints on it. That included Marvel Snap, something that caught Second Dinner completely off-guard. Even as TikTok came back up on Sunday, Marvel Snap remained unplayable in the U.S., something the game's developer hopes to have remedied before the end of Monday.

The following was posted to Marvel Snap's various social channels, including its X (formerly Twitter) account, early Sunday evening:

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.

In the meantime, global players should be able to continue to play with no issues.

There aren't many details to go along with this statement, but it's at least something. Marvel Snap finding itself in limbo (not to be confused with Limbo, which extends games to seven turns) has adversely affected all U.S. players, as well as the game's development studio and various content creators who have relied on the game to make their own living. Currently attempting to log into the game in the United States will notify players that the game has been banned due to U.S. legislation while the official Marvel Snap website cannot be accessed from U.S. soil without a VPN.

The source of these troubles is the TikTok ban itself. As the United States prepares to make the transition of power this Monday, TikTok has tentatively restored service to American users in anticipation of a pending President Trump Executive Order, but other games and apps tied up with TikTok do not appear to have such a reprieve.

How did Marvel Snap end up here in the first place? Original publisher Nuverse was a subsidiary of TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance. What makes everything confusing is that Nuverse had made its intentions clear to wind down and exit gaming with Second Dinner operating Marvel Snap independently. How Marvel Snap was affected by the TikTok ban is an answer that nobody at Second Dinner appears to have.

We'll continue to monitor this situation and look for that Monday estimate for Marvel Snap's return. Keep it on Shacknews for further updates.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?