Marvel Snap's TikTok Ban Controversy Explained

Many Marvel Snapplayers logged into the app on the evening of January 18, 2025, only to be met with a message stating that the app had been banned in the United States. Players in the US were told they would be unable to log into Marvel Snapor download it from their devices' app storesfor the duration of the ban. While the related TikTok ban was well-covered and generally expected, the Marvel Snap ban was much more of a surprise. The message read almost exactly like a truncated version of the TikTok ban notification, stating that the app had been banned and was unavailable in the US.

But while TikTok came back online the afternoon of the following day, Marvel Snap was down for more than a full 24 hours. The unexpected ban caused a ripple effect throughout the game's community and development team, and may have already led to changes to the collectible card game. Here's what really happened with the Marvel Snap ban, and what to expect going forward.

Why Marvel Snap Was Down For More Than A Day

The Marvel Snap Ban Explained

Marvel Snap and TikTok were both banned as part of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA). Passed by Congress in April 2024, PAFACA makes it illegal for certain mobile apps to be distributed, maintained, or hosted in the United States if the President determines them to be a national security risk owned and operated by a "foreign adversary" of the United States, unless the app's parent company successfully divests from that "adversary." The only company mentioned by name in the bill is ByteDance Ltd. - the Chinese parent company of both TikTok and NuVerse, the publisher of Marvel Snap.

In short, Marvel Snap went offline due to an act of Congress that declared it a national security risk, accusing it of collecting data for the Chinese government - an allegation TikTok has denied. Still, this led to the brief banning of several apps owned or operated by ByteDance in the US, including TikTok, Marvel Snap, the social media site Lemon8, and the editing software CapCut.

ByteDance's apps slowly began coming back online in the ensuing 24 hours, after President-elect Donald Trump publicly declared he'd grant ByteDance a 90-day extension to its period of divestiture. However, while TikTok's service was fully restored by the following afternoon, Marvel Snap took a little longer to come back online - probably because its banning was completely unexpected to its US-based development team.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Second Dinner (the development studio that makes Marvel Snap) admitted that "This outage is a surprise to us and wasn't planned," but ensured players that it wouldn't be permanent. By the evening of January 20, Marvel Snap was indeed back up and running in the United States, but download availability and in-app purchases remained unavailable even longer - at the time of writing, Marvel Snap was still absent from Google Play and the Apple App Store in the US. Either way, the damage was already done.

How The TikTok Ban Affected Marvel Snap

Marvel SNAP - Blink, Nocturne, and Namora

Like most mobile games of its type, Marvel Snap features timed events. Its most recent event is the Dark Avengers Season Pass, which allows players to claim items like cards, cosmetics, and currency if they complete certain challenges within a limited amount of time. Progressing in the Season Pass requires commitment, including daily or almost-daily logins. Players may also have invested time in time-limited missions that expired during the ban. Many found themselves set back in the Season Pass by the sudden outage, and may miss out on certain higher-tier rewards by the end of the season.

Some players do pay to access a premium version of the Season Pass, which offers more and better rewards to those who purchase it.

In addition, Marvel Snap has a daily login bonus program, in which players can obtain rewards simply by opening the game. These rewards increase in value the more days they use the app consecutively; i.e., the longer the streak, the bigger the gift. The sudden ban inevitably cut off many players' streaks, resetting them to day one of the daily login bonuses and resetting their progress towards the higher-tier rewards.

Although no compensation has been offered to players affected by the ban yet, Second Dinner says in a post on X that it's working on a solution. Players may be offered some sort of consolation prize in exchange for content and rewards missed during the outage - keep an eye on Second Dinner's social media pages for more details as they come.

What Marvel Snap Is Doing To Fix The Problem

Second Dinner's Search For A New Publisher

Marvel Snap Battle Mode Promotional Artwork Featuring Odin vs Ultron Among Other Marvel Characters

In the wake of the outage, the developers of Marvel Snap have decided to take steps to prevent future outages. In a further post on X, Second Dinner says that Marvel Snap is currently searching for a new publisher to replace the ByteDance-owned NuVerse, and working on ways to provide more of its own services in-house. Ideally, this would prevent Marvel Snap from being subject to further bans if PAFACA is enforced against ByteDance again after the 90-day extension.

And that's where Second Dinner left things with the Marvel Snap ban. Of course, its search for a new publisher is still in its early days - expect further updates later down the line as that progresses. For now, players can take comfort in knowing that Marvel Snap is playable in the US once again, should be back up on app stores soon, and its developers are taking steps to ensure it won't be banned under PAFACA again.

Sources: Second Dinner/X (1, 2, 3)

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