- Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and more are all being moved to a new publisher
- At least in the US, ByteDance will no longer publish their releases
- US-based Skystone Games is taking on that job with new region-specific versions
One of the biggest news stories to crop up earlier this year was that of the TikTok ban (or in their case, voluntary offlining of the app). But while the discussion centred around the hows and whys for other outlets, here in the world of mobile, it was the huge crop of top games being swept up in the ban that caught our eye!
Marvel Snap, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and more all saw themselves yanked from the app store, in some cases without prior notice to the team or players. All of these were influenced by a tremendous push politically to pressure ByteDance into divesting from its hit social media platform.
But while TikTok may be back online now, many of those aforementioned releases didn’t see such a quick restoration. And in the case of Marvel Snap, they were quick to announce they would be seeking a new publisher, which they got in the form of Skystone, a publisher who now holds the rights to virtually all of ByteDance’s US-published releases.
Touch the sky
Being swept up in dramatic political intrigue was certainly not on my bingo card for mobile gaming this year. But for the average player, this is certainly going to be welcome news as it means they’ll either be able to keep playing as normal, or at the very least enjoy a US-specific version of their favourite release.
But at the same time, this is hardly the most satisfactory outcome, and the fact that our favourite games can be handled like a political football is, I’m sure, not happy news for anyone.
With the deadline for a TikTok sale looming, we may soon be seeing how things are handled politically when it comes to apps and the knock-on effect on games published by the same company that we’ve already seen could spell disaster for similar situations in future.
