Table of Contents
Welcome back to this week’s Developer Update! This week’s edition comes after the launch of the new Series 5 card Lockheed, the new season, and the latest patch! If you haven’t seen what was changed with the update, be sure to check out the official patch notes!
If you don’t know if the new cards are worth Snap Packs or tokens, make sure to check out our Bonus Challenge guide for a post-release review of the card and new decklists!
Answers and questions may be slightly rephrased for more clarity and ease of reading. This week’s topics will be divided into Card Specific Questions, Other Questions, and Questions From You!
See all individual questions and answers updated in real time!
Card Specific Questions
Q: With the emergence of the Discard AND Destroy archetype, how would one effect get balanced if one of the triggers is added, removed, or swapped? For example, if Marrow only triggered when destroyed, I would assume the card would need to be stronger elsewhere. However, would the same be true if the effect was changed to discard only?
A: Glenn “Likely just the scale of the change and the context. If Marrow changed to discard only, seems unlikely we’d buff its numbers–we’re nerfing it to make it weaker, and I’m not sure if the destroy capability is worth 2 Power and we wouldn’t want to break even. If it was destroy only, that is meaningfully weaker so we’d probably perform some kind of ‘compensation’ alongside that nerf. All hypothetical, assuming we were seeking a small nerf.”
Q: You mentioned possibly reworking Jean Grey, but wouldn’t you try balance adjustments first? Some people just can’t figure her out, and balance changes could fix that. Plus, you could just save the rework for a new card.
A: Glenn “The issue with Jean isn’t that people ‘can’t figure her out’ it’s that she attacks the core fun of the game. We don’t really want Jean to be strong for that reason, but Jean’s a beloved enough character that we’d like her to have strong cards available. It’s a fairly similar scenario as the one that led to reworking Spider-Man.
I agree we could consider simply doing a new card too–that’s generally my favorite option. But Jean is very popular, and we’d love to give players more uses for the variants they love.”
Q: Shang-Chi’s rings start in hand but it is unclear in which way. Do the rings start in hand like Quicksilver counting as a draw or is it a free resource like Agatha?
A: Brady “Confirmed this works like Quicksilver.”
Q: Are you sure that -2 Power on a card like Lockheed is a good balance idea?
A: Glenn “We’re never sure, that’s how game design works. But we test and do our best on each card.”
Q: Is it intended that my opponent played Luna Snow, so my Chameleon copied the Ice Cube?
A: Glenn “Creating a card at a location is also a reveal. It’s the same reason Arnim Zola can retrigger Black Panther.”
Q: Just reading the patch notes, I was shocked by the Iceman change, as I know it’s a line in the sand that Glenn discussed at some point around Spider-Ham’s release. Is there a justification for this change?
A: Glenn “I’ve personally wanted to make this Iceman change for years, so I’m not sure what line in the sand you mean. That said, I can discuss some of my thinking around the nuances!
For cards like Iceman and Spider-Ham, I tend to lean toward showing the affected card. This is because otherwise the player may never learn what their effect actually did–the opponent might never play the card, or might discount it somehow, or just have a spare Energy for Iceman, whatever. It can feel like you ‘got nothing,’ and we generally want cards to feel rewarding for the people choosing to play with them, assuming it’s balanced.
How is that different from Scorpion or Silver Sable? Well, Scorpion’s effect applies widely, so you’re pretty likely to see a couple afflicted cards. Also, many cards are played for their effects, so even cards like Silver Sable more often ‘reveal their target’ naturally. But getting Pigged or Cost increased can make a card a lot more unlikely to be played.
Conversely, getting a card from your opponent’s hand with something like White Queen or Mirage is actually more fun for the player of those cards if the opponent doesn’t know what you copied, so we keep that hidden. Again, favoring the player controlling the effect.
So what about Red Hulk? Well, that’s kind of an exception that proves the rule. Red Hulk is designed to create a ‘minigame’ between you and your opponent by pressuring them to use all their Energy. But for that to work, they have to know the minigame is going on, so we show them. We love minigames, so in this case we think the tradeoff nets more fun.”
Q: Do you think the same logic of the Ice Man change applies to Korg, Rockslide, and Terrax?
A: Glenn “Yes, I think the logic applies, but the trade is for much worse gameplay. Your opponent drawing a Rock is already so good for you, it doesn’t need to become stronger by letting you know how many draws they’re losing to the Rocks. Creating a card like Darkhawk also goes a long way toward ensuring it feels satisfying to Rock people to address this issue.
As a counterexample, let’s say a hypothetical card was ‘On Reveal: Add a bomb to a card in your opponent’s deck. When they draw it, afflict their hand with -1 Power.’ The detonation effect I’d totally advocate to make visible to both players, because it’s a better balance of satisfaction to strength.”
Q: Any chance cable will show the deck builders which card was taken? Why doesn’t it show up in the banished list or somewhere to know what it was?
A: Glenn “Because it’s not accurate to be in any of those lists, and it’s information asymmetry in favor of the Cable player.”
Other Questions
Q: How are the decks that bots play on the ranked ladder created?
A: Glenn “The foundation is the same technology as the ‘smart decks’ you can use yourself in deckbuilder. But we introduce some more randomization via substitution to ensure they play a range of different versions of archetypes as well as simulate a range of CLs.”
Q: Do you see any meaningful amount of players intentionally losing to lower their MMR?
A: Glenn “While we occasionally see players being charitable in game modes, tanking MMR isn’t a common behavior in part because it doesn’t really work. Your MMR isn’t like your Snap Points, it doesn’t have the same bias toward recent results. What you’ve encountered are probably just players focusing on quests or missions more than cubes.”
Q: Why don’t you try selling things in the game that are cheaper, like $1 or $5 so you can reach a wider audience of buyers?
A: Glenn “Respectfully, we’ve tried a fairly massive number of different things with monetization, including A/B testing a variety of pricing ranges. It’s popular for players to theorize on what would work best for us or what they or others would buy, but we’re playing with live rounds and they always tell the truth.
That’s not to say we don’t think there are opportunities to improve our approach, and we’re always pursuing those through combinations of market research and user testing.”
Q: Is there any chance for a standard Giant Man card one day?
A: Glenn “Certainly a chance!”
Q: Are there any lessons you learned in 2025 that you will remember now in 2026?
A: Griffin “2025 was a year that was full of expected and unexpected experiences that not only impacted last year but our learnings will continue to impact 2026.
Our journey from the ‘Snappening’ to self-publishing is one that came with loads of brand new challenges for the team. We’ve discussed those challenges here in team answers throughout the year, but taking that on was no easy or simple task. We learned a TON but it wasn’t without a few bumps in the road. Processes and systems like the Web Shop and key Marketing functions had to be created anew.
We always like to talk about working in stages from a ‘crawl, walk, run’ perspective as we learn more and improve. As 2025 came to an end we felt like we were just getting to the ‘run’ phase when it came to many of those new self-publishing functions.”
Q: What ever happened to twitch drops?
A: Griffin “We’re working on bringing them back as quickly as we can.
Long story short, there’s an issue with the way we ingest your Twitch info via the Web Shop and then deliver the rewards. We’re working on fixing those Web Shop issues so we can bring it back ASAP.”
Q: Are you aware that sometimes pop-up ads for the webshop will appear during a live match? And why do some pop-ups appear about buying the season pass on the we Shop, but I already did?
A: Griffin “I’ll let the team know about this right now. Popping up mid-game is a known issue and definitely not intended for ANY message. Also, we never want pop-ups to show up for things you already have been alerted to or own.”
Q: When are the new dates for High Voltage?
A: Griffin “High Voltage: Overdrive will kick off at reset on Jan 12 and end Jan 19 at reset. The Shop will remain open for 48 hours after that.”
Q: Is Zenn-La supposed to pull cards with modified Cost? Like Pixie changing Valkyrie to a 3-Cost?
A: Glenn “Thanks, we’ve got this bugged already. Zenn-La shouldn’t count modified costs.”
Q: Is there a timeline to get cards like “Activate”, “End of Turn”, and “Skills” into card filter options?
A: Griffin “It’s on our list, for sure! No timeline on it now, though.”
Q: Is there any update on the lack of Black and Rainbow Cosmic borders in the shop?
A: Griffin “The team is aware of this issue and a fix is planned for the next patch.”
Q: What is the new custom card tab added with the patch?
A: CJ “That’s so you don’t have to dig for your Custom Card. Click on it to enter your custom card edit. Previously you’d have to find your custom card in your variant list and then enter it via the edit button.”
Q: Is the double split xp for character mastery this month the plan for improving the feature?
A: Griffin “We do have plans to continue to improve Character Mastery beyond just adjusting numbers. We don’t have a timeline for when that will be done, however.”
Q: Why haven’t crashes been the top priority fix for patches?
A: Glenn “Many (most?) crashing issues get addressed outside of patch cycles–that’s how high a priority they are. But being a high priority doesn’t guarantee something will be done quickly, just that it will receive appropriate attention.”
Q: Will the “dev picks” for variants ever be updated to include all of the newer variants?
A: Glenn “We’ve actually recently updated the dev picks, though I’m not sure that’s been pushed live yet.”
Q: Will Turkish language support be added?
A: Griffin “We don’t have any plans for Turkish language support at this time.”
Q: Why aren’t you fixing the Japanese webshop?
A: Glenn “The purpose of the rewards are to increase traffic to the web store. Providing them in-game would defeat that purpose.
Literally no one wants every country on Earth to have access to the Snap webstore more than we do, I can promise you that 🙁 It’s not being ignored, but we are not fully in control of our destiny on this front.”
A: Griffin “We are still working on the Japan Web Shop! We’ve hit some unfortunate technical hurdles but it is coming.”
Q: Why are bots so quick to retreat now?
A: Glenn “The bots retreat quite a bit less often than humans. Fairly good chance you’re encountering more humans than you think if you feel you’re observing otherwise.”
Q: What ever happened to global bounties?
A: Griffin “We ran Global Bounties as something we could have fun doing when we didn’t have a LTGM scheduled as it was something that didn’t require any dev-time. Its intention was to create an “offline” event that we could track and provide updates on while chasing rewards.
We got tons of feedback from players that they did not enjoy these events as there wasn’t any in-game feedback on progress being made. Now that we have a really good cadence of LTGMs, along with the feedback from the Global Bounties, we don’t have plans to run one again unless we can get some sort of in-game support for it.”
Q: Is there any design space for a card that removes visual indicators like Zombi Galacti’s green glow?
A: Glenn “Fairly low utility, but also a lot of why we want those kinds of FX is to help make the game easier to understand and play. More likely to make a card that makes the screen go dark for a turn or something 🙂”
Q: Are there any season themes that the team won’t do because either, A: they were done in the past and reception of it was seen as negative. B: the theme isn’t big enough for a season.
A: Glenn “We consider the popularity of our themes in whether or not to reprise them, and any theme has to be able to support a season. But it’s not like ‘Oh, we’ll never do that again!’ and more ‘How would we do this better next time?'”
Q: I saw some YouTube videos recently that the economy of Marvel Snap got much more generous compared to previous iterations and it’s, with enough time investment, eventually possible even for a F2P player to get all cards. I myself am not F2P but I definitely have more cards nowadays so I believe the math on this. Despite this, the community mood is overwhelmingly negative, especially on Reddit and Discord. The reviews on the PlayStore and Steam fell as well, with Steam being even at “Mixed” which would make me not try the game if I was a new player.
1) How frustrating is this for you guys as a team, when you, objectively speaking, became more generous and the community does not seem to appreciate it?
2) Do you have any explanation why the mood around the game is so negative despite the positive developments?
3) Do you have any plans to get back the player’s good will?
A: Glenn “1. It’s always a bummer to see our goals or methods misrepresented, but also something we’re all familiar with. Often these are genuine misunderstandings, but they also happen more when we reach for a negative take faster than a positive one. I personally get misquoted a ton; I don’t think it’s always intentional, but the outcome’s the same.
2. As I alluded to above, it’s fairly common for social media’s mood to lean negative, but we have had some ‘spikes’ like Kid Omega review bombs. Side note: not an ideal form of feedback. It winds up being quite damaging regardless of whether a game improves, which in turn can reduce the incentive to improve (as you worry). We remain very motivated to improve, but the damage is done.
As developers, it’s our job to get actionable feedback from our players, whether the mood is good or bad. I believe everyone is ultimately trying to describe how Snap makes them feel, and that’s something we want to know.
3. Personally, the only strategy I’ve experienced success with in this arena is to focus on doing good work well, and to maintain as open and honest a dialogue with creators and the community as we can. The former tends to speak for itself, and the latter is why I’m here.”
Questions From You!
Each week, I ask readers of the weekly dev update to leave their questions down in the comment section. That way we can ask those questions on your behalf, or let you know the answers if those questions have been asked before! I read each comment you leave, so I will be adding this section at the end of each week’s edition to highlight your questions that you asked last week!
Q: Why is Merlin a “start of turn” card and not an “end of turn”? Since “end of turn” is a supported archetype and “start of turn” isn’t and both are very similar. What goes into deciding which category a card should go into?
A: Glenn “Two things: sensible function, and game balance.
Merlin’s a Start of Turn card in function–he gives you a card to play, just like your draw step–we wouldn’t want that at the end of turn, either. Giving you a card you can’t play is fundamentally weird, and that’s what he’d do at the end of every game if he triggered at the end of the turn.
As you noted, there’s an archetype around one. That alone makes it a balance consideration, since Fantasticar and Invisible Woman FS matter with a wide range of cards, but even without them there can be a strength impact. Sometimes adding strength to an archetype this way is cool and fun, but sometimes it’s unnecessary or less fun and we keep an eye on that too.”
Q: Is there any possibility for licensed characters in Snap? For example, Godzilla has a long history in the Marvel Universe, and had a big event comic with Marvel recently; could we see him in Snap?
A: Griffin “These types of things are quite complicated from a legal or rights perspective to get across the finish line so we’ll stay pretty quiet about any attempts for cross-promotion ahead of time.”
Keep Your Questions and Feedback Coming!
That’s all for this week’s update! Be sure to check back here at Marvel Snap Zone for next week’s update! If you enjoyed the amount of content in this edition, make sure to keep asking your questions to the developers by submitting it in their official Discord in the “#ask-the-team” channel. If you have questions and don’t use Discord, leave your questions for the developers in the comment section here, and I will make sure your question has been answered by the devs!
If you have feedback or changes you would like to see with these weekly updates, also let us know in the comment section!
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