It actually looks like ByteDance is blocking them to generate uproar. The law only required to remove the app from app store
It prohibits other companies from providing support services to them too.
I’ll add, “my government might get pissed off at one of the companies involved” to my list of reasons why always-online games are a terrible idea.
Or “the company might get pissy with your government for any reason”. No reason to let them off the hook, either.
Why wouldn’t a multiplayer-focused game be always online?
Self-hostable servers, this way if their datacenters go down, game is still playable
LAN play
Another commenter already gave you the answer, but it truly sucks that we’ve gotten so used to this that you can’t imagine an alternative.
huh, had no idea it was made by bytedance as well
Yeah. You might want to look into some other foreign owned companies as well. Tencent owns a metric shit ton of “American” companies for instance, I bet there’s several on that list that would surprise you.
Tencent I’m aware of, there was quite a bit of controversy about them a few years back
Tencent happen to own large portions of nearly every video game company on the planet to start with, and a ton of other large companies, 600+ of them in fact. Large enough positions to directly affect board decisions if they wanted to. And that assumes overt sudden changes and not more subtle things.
IIRC the reason for this is that China requires that games published there be published by entities that are at least some arbitrary percentage Chinese owned. So basically if you want access to that huge market - that loves video games - you have to cut a deal with Tencent or someone else like them.
I recall that tencent had like a small stake in Reddit too. Like 10% or something like that. Or am I remembering wrong?
As of their last filing in September it is 10 to 12%
They invested money, I don’t remember hearing that it got them any share of the company.
That’s typically what you get in return for an investment. The only question is if it’s enough of a share to give control or at least influence.
dear God, please let League of Legends get banned, it would be so funny
It’s not made by Bytedance. It’s made by one company and published by a second, different company who is owned by Bytedance.
Not made by, the studio is “second dinner” the same guys that made hearthstone, but in their own studio.
Why does nearly everything entertaining support oligarchs
Nevermind, rhetorical question. There’s no ethical consumption yadayada
You have it backwards, oligarchs are controlling the media
Yea. Backwards samewards, omnidirectionally
Yeah, oligarchs are controlling the media they own, and consuming their media supports oligarchs.
What part of what they said was backwards?
I feel like bytedance is doing this on purpose to rule people up, as these kinds of services weren’t explicity called out.
It may backfire though. I don’t think most Americans know how much is influenced/owned by Chinese companies.
They did. And they’re already are rolling it back, specifically thanking trump for helping to “restore service”. It was all a political stunt, and nobody’s gonna care cause their skinner button got turned back on again.
The bill very explicitly calls out ByteDance and any website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application owned by them.
https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr7521/BILLS-118hr7521rfs.pdf
Hmm, I may be reading it wrong, but it’s just talking about the distribution/updating of foreign controlled applications. Based on what I’ve seen Marvel Snap isnt controlled by them, they just provide services for the application, so it wouldn’t technically apply. However, I’m not a lawyer and may have the wrong read on the app, but given the game developers were surprised I’d think that’s the right read.
This feels like ByteDance going out of their way to paint the outgoing president and party as truly awful and give the victory to Trump in a week
I think they know that saying “you’ll look better than Biden” is a great way to manipulate trump into doing just about anything.
It absolutely was.
Trump will fix this. After a small payment from the companies. And then just ignoring the law.
And nothing of value was lost.
Man, even the government are tried of capeshit.
Its almost like there are consequences of banning something folks don’t understand the full scope of…
Hopefully they ban marvel rivals too.
Rivals isn’t that bad. It has its issues but it doesn’t warrant a ban
Who cares. Find a new game.
You care nothing of freedoms do you? I don’t use either of these apps but I still think it is outrageous to strip people’s ability to choose their actions because politicians are worried they can’t control enough of the media.
“Find a new game” is just “fall in line”
They’re not banning Mastodon, or the Fediverse, or EU based messaging apps.
i.e. the objection is not that the US government doesn’t control it, but that the Chinese government does.