- “Marvel Snap” was removed from US app stores alongside TikTok this weekend.
- The Supreme Court upheld a law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok, affecting its other apps too.
- “Marvel Rivals” is so far unaffected but is also owned by a major Chinese conglomerate.
“Marvel Snap,” a popular mobile card game, is now gone from US app stores as a consequence of the TikTok drama.
TikTok followed through on its promise to “go dark” in the United States on Saturday night after the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to find a non-Chinese buyer for its US operations.
Its offline status was short-lived, however.
TikTok began coming back online on Sunday after President-elect Donald Trump said he would issue an executive order extending the deadline for TikTok to find a buyer.
While current users can access TikTok, the social media app and other ones owned by ByteDance are still not available in app stores. That includes video editing app Cap Cut, social media app Lemon8, and “Marvel Snap.”
Users who tried to log into “Marvel Snap” on Sunday were met with a similar message to the one that for several hours greeted users on TikTok. The message says that “Marvel Snap” is currently “not available” after a law was enacted that banned the app in the United States.
“Rest assured we’re working to restore our service in the US. Please stay tuned!” the message says. In a since deleted post, “Marvel Snap” developers said on X that they were not told the app would shut down before the ban.
“Unfortunately, MARVEL SNAP is temporarily unavailable in US app stores and is unavailable to play in the US,” the post said. “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.”
“Marvel Snap” isn’t the only popular Marvel game owned and created by a large Chinese developer. “Marvel Rivals,” developed by Chinese company NetEase, was released in December to massive player numbers across the United States.
“Marvel Rivals” hit a peak player count of over 640,000 on Steam, the PC game store, this month, in addition to being one of the top games in the PlayStation and Xbox stores, according to Forbes.
In December, just weeks before the TikTok and “Marvel Snap” ban was to go into effect, “Marvel Rivals” and “Marvel Snap” participated in collaborative events, which required users to log in to their accounts on each game, sharing account information between the two.
“Marvel Rivals” also participated in similar events in December with “Fortnite,” which is owned by American developer Epic Games. Tencent, another Chinese gaming mega-corporation, owns about 35% of Epic Games.
Tencent has a strong footing in the US games industry. It owns 100% of Riot Games, which makes “League of Legends” and “Valorant,” and has significant investments in the makers of “Clash of Clans,” among others.
While companies like NetEase and Tencent don’t have a specific “app,” laws like the one targeting ByteDance could ultimately lead to scrutiny of their involvement in the US games industry, games YouTuber and analyst Paul Tassi wrote in Forbes.
“The claim here could be that Tencent being intimately involved with loads of major games that US citizens, and particularly children, are playing might be a “harmful” Chinese influence, or something along those lines,” Tassi wrote.
Marvel Studios did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider on Sunday.
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