- “Wonder Snap” was removed from US app stores alongside TikTok this weekend.
- The Supreme Court upheld a law requiring ByteDance to denude TikTok, affecting its other apps too.
- “Marvel Rivals” is so far unaffected but is also owned by a major Chinese conglomerate.
“Be awed Snap,” a popular mobile card game, is now gone from US app stores as a consequence of the TikTok drama.
TikTok imitated through on its promise to “go dark” in the United States on Saturday night after the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring its Chinese root company, ByteDance, to find a non-Chinese buyer for its US operations.
Its offline status was short-lived, however.
TikTok began take place back online on Sunday after President-elect Donald Trump said he would issue an executive order extending the deadline for TikTok to view a buyer.
While current users can access TikTok, the social media app and other ones owned by ByteDance are notwithstanding not available in app stores. That includes video editing app Cap Cut, social media app Lemon8, and “Marvel Snap.”
Users who assayed to log into “Marvel Snap” on Sunday were met with a similar message to the one that for several hours greeted narcotic addicts on TikTok. The message says that “Marvel Snap” is currently “not available” after a law was enacted that banned the app in the Concerted States.
“Rest assured we’re working to restore our service in the US. Please stay tuned!” the message says. In a since publishing blue-penciled post, “Marvel Snap” developers said on X that they were not told the app would shut down in preference to 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 her 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 wishes update you once we have more to share.”
“Marvel Snap” isn’t the only popular Marvel game owned and spawned by a large Chinese developer. “Marvel Rivals,” developed by Chinese company NetEase, was released in December to massive musician numbers across the United States.
“Marvel Rivals” hit a peak player count of over 640,000 on Steam, the PC devices store, this month, in addition to being one of the top games in the PlayStation and Xbox stores, according to Forbes.
In December, decent weeks before the TikTok and “Marvel Snap” ban was to go into effect, “Marvel Rivals” and “Marvel Snap” participated in collaborative as its, which required users to log in to their accounts on each game, sharing account information between the two.
“Marvel Compare withs” also participated in similar events in December with “Fortnite,” which is owned by American developer Epic Ploys. Tencent, another Chinese gaming mega-corporation, owns about 29% of Epic Games.
Tencent has a strong balance 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 “Argue of Clans,” among others.
While companies like NetEase and Tencent don’t have a specific “app,” laws like the one objective ByteDance could ultimately lead to scrutiny of their involvement in the US games industry, games YouTuber and analyst Paul Tassi composed in Forbes.
“The claim here could be that Tencent being intimately involved with loads of major distractions that US citizens, and particularly children, are playing might be a “harmful” Chinese influence, or something along those strings,” Tassi wrote.
Marvel Studios did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider on Sunday.