On January 19, TikTok temporarily ceased operations in the US, which unexpectedly affected Marvel Snap, a popular card game developed by Second Dinner Studios and released by Nuverse, a division of ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok. The game was unavailable for 24 hours but is now back online. However, full access has not yet been restored, and in-game purchases remain unavailable. In an effort to prevent such disruptions in the future, the developers are considering switching publishers and plan to transition some services to internal resources, as stated in an official announcement on Platform X.
The decision to explore new publishing options stems from political risks. TikTok was granted a 90-day extension to sell 50% of its business to a local owner. If this deal fails, TikTok and related projects like Marvel Snap could face another blockage.
Second Dinner Studios has promised to provide further updates. Despite the outage, PC players could still access the game on Steam. The developers at Second Dinner were taken aback by the incident and are actively working to fully restore the game. According to an official statement on Platform X:
“Marvel Snap is here to stay. We're working hard to restore the game as quickly as possible, and we'll keep players informed of our progress”.
A significant issue was the lack of prior warning to players. Many were unaware of the potential lockout and continued to make in-game purchases, leading to frustration and complaints about authorization issues.
