Marvel Snap got caught up in the TikTok ban; so what does this mean for us?

• TikTok’s banning was one of the biggest news stories over the weekend
• But Marvel Snap and other top releases also saw themselves pulled down
• With Second Dinner seemingly at a loss, this match of political football might be a dangerous one to play

If there’s a contender for the biggest news to take place over the weekend, for better or for worse, one of the top picks would have to be TikTok going offline in the United States. Having been on the cards for a while in the wake of a congressional act that targeted it as a “foreign adversary controlled application”, the ban seemingly finally took effect this Sunday.

Of course, reading this now you probably already know that president-elect Donald Trump immediately pledged to return it to service, and ByteDance brought their hot social media app back from its self-imposed exile in short order. However, some of its other applications have yet to see such a fanfare-filled return.

Case-in-point, Marvel Snap the equally popular comic-themed card battler. As we covered over the weekend, Marvel Snap (alongside other releases from ByteDance subsidiaries, such as Moonton’s Mobile Legends: Bang Bang) saw service halted in the United States with a choice message saying it had been banned.

The message here was clear from TikTok owner ByteDance, which was you either took all of what they had or you would get none of it.

The real kicker? It seems that developer Second Dinner wasn’t exactly warned about this, and has been running damage control over on Twitter for the past 24 hours. Despite this, they’ve promised to return Marvel Snap to service promptly; but this whole rigmarole raises some interesting and rather unpleasant questions.

Catch!

It doesn’t take someone with a degree in political science (which I incidentally do not have) to see that TikTok going offline and its pointed message singling out Trump as its potential saviour was likely a shrewd move by ByteDance to get people talking. And it seems to have paid off, allowing them to waltz back into availability in the United States and in suitably dramatic fashion too.

But this match of political football also swept up the aforementioned gaming releases, and ByteDance appears to have left some of its developers holding the bag, to use colloquial parlance. Second Dinner themselves have had to pledge some lucrative free rewards to make up for time lost when players get their hands back on their cards, hopefully by the time of publishing.

I can’t see this resulting in them packing their bags and leaving their lucrative partnership with ByteDance, but I doubt it’s done much to instil confidence on their part. The seeming message is that mobile gaming is much less important than the algorithm-fuelled social media enterprise that ByteDance has made bank on.

Game over

It’s definitely not the first message that ByteDance has sent regarding gaming seemingly coming second banana to their social media enterprise. Back in 2023, their highly-touted gaming division saw hundreds of employees axed in a massive round of layoffs that saw many projects yet to see the light of day being cancelled.

Despite this, since then the hit cad battler Marvel Snap seemed to be an indicator that ByteDance’s new tactic would be partnerships rather than homegrown releases. However, a betrayal of trust this big could make a bunch of other potential developers and publishers very, very nervous about getting caught up in the next political firestorm that ByteDance finds itself in.

I doubt there’s many who are happy over in the mouse’s castle either, as Disney has just had a fresh shot of relevance with the release of NetEase’s Marvel Rivals which itself gave mobile a big boost with a crossover collaboration earlier this month. ByteDance may have called the bluff of politicians but (ironically) players, developers and IP-holders are unlikely to be so bearish.

They think it’s all over…

Yet already we’ve got rumblings that ByteDance was only the tip of the iceberg. Tencent, NetEase and a myriad of other Chinese gaming companies could be the next target. The FTC has already taken aim at MiHoYo for their use of loot boxes, and even this highly-publicised spat and its rather deflating conclusion may not be enough to dissuade the next politician with an axe to grind coming after gaming.

What might happen next? Well, in the case of Marvel Snap, I saw a great many people (mainly the older folk) who were ambivalent about TikTok at best suddenly sitting up and taking notice when their favourite card battler was yanked. As shrewd and unexpected as it may have been, ByteDance’s gamble did pay off, which sets a worrying precedent.

After all, how are people going to feel when their favourite pastime is suddenly subject to the whims of someone in Washington, and their self-appointed opponents half a world away? There’s a saying about bread and circuses that could very well blow up in the faces of everyone involved.