‘Marvel Snap’ Developer Wasn’t Told It Would Be Banned, Recommends VPN – Forbes
The messageIf the fact that Marvel Snap was banned and taken offline in the US alongside the TikTok ban wasn’t weird enough, the story has taken an even stranger turn.Many players were furious with Second Dinner, the US-based developer of Marvel Snap, that there was no warning for this and nothing about how in-game purchases would simply evaporate with the game taken offline. Well, there’s a good reason for that, Second Dinner was not told about this move from its parent company ByteDance at all.Marvel Snap’s official account posted this on Twitter after the ban:Ben Brode, Marvel Snaps’ Chief Development Officer, is actually recommending that players use a VPN, which can make it seem like you’re playing from Canada, to get around the ban temporarily.All of this is happening because all ByteDance apps are going offline thanks to the fallout from the TikTok ban in the US which was just implemented yesterday. Even though previously ByteDance divested itself from its Nuverse gaming arm, that was apparently not enough to avoid this fate.Marvel SnapIt is beyond unbelievable that an entire game would be taken offline without any notice to its entire development team, who in turn were not be able to make its fanbase aware this was happening. This obviously impacts everyone who works at Second Dinner, a group of creators that plays the game essentially for a living for their audiences, and then all the game’s players who have shelled out a lot of cash for variant cards for a collection they can no longer access.The running theory is that this is all just going to end up being a stunt, and that when Donald Trump takes office tomorrow, he will delay this ban or not enforce it or something along those lines to keep TikTok online. The irony of this is that years ago Trump was on the forefront of trying to get TikTok banned, but he changed his mind at some point during the next election when it seemed TikTok was starting to benefit his campaign. Now he’s being cited in their offline message, which says directly ByteDance will work with Trump to fix this. The CEO was invited to his inauguration.So, this may not last that long. Second Dinner’s social media manager is already saying the team is working on it: “Don’t worry, we are working on a fix to get everything restored asap. You don’t need to be free for too long bro.” I’m not exactly sure how this works with ByteDance apparently doing this unilaterally, but hopefully players will have some updates soon.Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site’s Terms of Service. We’ve summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:So, how can you be a power user?Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site’s Terms of Service.
