Developer Update for the Week of June 29, 2025: Sanctum Showdown Edition (30+ Questions)!

Welcome back to this week’s Developer Update! This week’s edition comes after:

• The launch of the new Series 5 card Dormammu. If you don’t know if Dormammu is worth Snap Packs, make sure to check out our Bonus Challenge guide for a post-release review of the card and new decklists!
• The latest OTA! If you haven’t seen what was changed with the balance update, be sure to check out the official patch notes!
• Return of the new limited time game mode Sanctum Showdown until July 3.
• The patch and OTA schedule has been announced up to August.

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!

Card Specific Questions

Q: Was Nightmare ever tested to only target Characters instead of all cards?
A: Glenn “I don’t recall if we actually tested it, but our general preference is to start wide and narrow effects as necessary so I would assume we probably never saw the need. It’s a fine balancing point to have cards like this affect deckbuilding, and serves to further differentiate the card from Sauron.”

Q: Would Werewolf by Night and Batroc the Leaper be considered candidates for Sanctum Showdown bans?
A: Glenn “I think they might be candidates, but we generally prefer to ban cards based on their performance, not predicting it, unless we have testing that indicates the card is certain to be problematic.”

Q: Will Arishem be able to generate Astral Projection since it isn’t tied to another card?
A: Glenn “Yes, it’s a card.”

Q: With the Pig from Spider-Ham being removed, will this token ever be used again in the future?
A: Glenn “I can imagine we might visit Earth-8311 in the future, so I’d never say never!”

Q: Marvel Mystic Mayhem just released and the villain introduced is Nightmare. Was his release being in the same month, almost the same week, a coincidence?
A: Glenn “Yes, actually! Sometimes things just work out cool.”

Q: Why did you make Mercury such a strong card?
A: Glenn “Move (and cards that move) have quite often been strong, so having a solid release valve available in the metagame is quite useful to us. We’ve nerfed quite a few cards to keep Human Torch around as-is that Mercury might’ve been able to avoid.

Mercury’s winrate and cuberate, while positive, are both quite modest. She is well below the thresholds for a nerf on all counts.”

Q: The Space Stone text used to say “nothing can stop you from moving Thanos”, but it no longer does (despite it never meaning anything anyways). Why was it removed, and why was it there to begin with?
A: Glenn “It was largely just flavor, but we decided to remove it based on a common confusion that the Stone would grant Thanos movement.”

Q: Esme has felt clunky and weak since release. Is she up for a buff? Did releasing her during a company retreat cause her to be released in a milder state?
A: Glenn “We’ve considered a buff to Esme, but we don’t want to lose her ‘clone’ wink and haven’t found the right tweak yet.

We don’t change our design strategy based on things like company retreats, we just adjust our scheduling to assign the same work effort differently.”

Q: With Spider-Ham’s new functionality, could we ever see Sauron turn characters into dinosaurs?
A: Glenn “I don’t think we’ll go that route, but a dinosaur-themed flair/finish might be in order…”

Q: Can you share any news about a rework for Kang?
A: Glenn “I can share that I’m playtesting a version of the card literally right now”

Other Questions

Q: Will Skills like Astral Projection ever get variants, or are those exclusive to characters?
A: Glenn “We’re planning for them to have variants, but not as many relative to characters.”

Q: Do you ever measure retreat rates after a card is played?
A: Glenn “We do look at retreats periodically. They do count as wins for the opposing player/card/deck. Retreating is purposefully a function that allows players to weaken the impact of a card’s strength, so it is a balance element that we expect to manifest in the data.

In general, we have a preference for games to go to showdown fairly often and retreats to be distributed on a slope, but that’s true for the metagame as a whole—not every card or deck. Some decks earn many more retreats than others, or retreat of their own accord, and that’s by design.”

Q: You mentioned your Snap Pack goals were to have 5-6 new Series-5 cards, and 4-5 Series-4 cards added each season. This month we got 7 Series-5 and 6 Series-4 cards. Is this your new goal?
A: Glenn “This month was atypical, as it included cards from previous seasons that had not been released, dating as far back as February.”

Q: After seeing the Kid Omega issues, many content creators have shared their views, but their feedback never seems to be acknowledged or shown to have impacts. Are there any plans to improve your relations with content creators?
A: Griffin “We’ve spoken to the creators about this before, and our conversations will continue.

When the publishing changes occurred, part of that was taking over the Creator Program from Nuverse. My personal goal since then is to completely revamp the program to be the absolute best it can be utilizing creator feedback. Getting there takes time, however.”

Q: Since you’re self-publishing now, will we see new data released like number/percentage of players reaching infinite each season?
A: Glenn “While we may release some numbers we haven’t before, the specific ones you mentioned are not the kinds of information we intend to publish more broadly.”

Q: Will the Marvel Snapshot on discord ever return?
A: Griffin “Those activations were run by Nuverse, our previous publisher. Perhaps we can run it again in the future but we don’t have any plans right now as we’re focused on improving our core capabilities on the publishing/marketing side first.”

Q: Is there any fallback plans for players who already had some of the pride variants what were part of this year’s bundle code?
A: Griffin “No fallback. We just wanted to give it out to players who may not already have it. If you already do, that’s great!”

Q: With multiple cards that start in your opening hand, do you have plans to make more cards that do the same thing?
A: Glenn “I expect we will continue making them, but we’ll also likely introduce a limiting element that prevents combining them. We’ve been considering that for a while already.”

Q: Why were 250 credits sent to players for a “technical issue”?
A: Griffin “That was for the short global server downtime we experienced recently.”

Q: What dials do you have when balancing Skills since they don’t have Power as a dial?
A: Glenn “They’re certainly more challenging to balance, but on the upside the disadvantage of lacking permanent Power is actually quite high–we much more often find ourselves buffing Skills than we do nerfing them. Other than Cost, we often try to bake in more values in the card text, such as adding a Power value (though not in this case).”

Q: Is multiple limited time modes per season the new normal? And will additional new cards be exclusively added to new modes?
A: Glenn “It is both an experiment and based on player feedback. We’re looking at other methods to connect players with new cards beyond LTGMs, but we have found linking them to LTGMs to be one of the most widely enjoyed ways to do that.”

Q: Is the Sanctum Showdown scroll refresh timer differently timed from the global refresh timer?
A: Glenn “Yes, it’s different. Sanctum’s rotating timer starts for each player the first time they dip below 12 scrolls, and then runs every 8 hours from that point.”

Q: What is the origin of the name “Second Dinner”?
A: Glenn “The origin of the name is that in early days, the founders would have dinner with their families, then meet to work (and often eat again) in the evenings.”

Q: Why were daily Volts sent to players during HV:O, but no scrolls sent during SS?
A: Griffin “Inbox Volts were sent due to the fact that we had to cancel the planned Twitch Drops.”

Q: Will we ever get another roadmap? It’s been a long time since the last one, or any changes in this “new era” of Snap?
A: Griffin “We wanted to get to the “other side” of our self-publishing launch before starting the conversation of what a new Roadmap would look like.

As you know, game development is very fluid and things can change quickly. We’ve had issues in the past with some Roadmaps providing expectations for features that either had to be shelved or delayed due to a myriad of issues.

We’re currently thinking of ways to best present the excitement for the future of Marvel Snap while also not putting the cart before the horse.

That’s a long-winded way of saying yes, we are currently discussing how to showcase upcoming content.”

Q: Since the Japanese webshop still isn’t working properly, is there any new update?
A: Griffin “While we had originally messaged a week delay in getting the Japan Web Shop up and running, we have run into some issues causing delays. We hope to have the Japanese Web Shop up and running by mid July.

We know this delay directly impacts the ability to earn Milestone Rewards, so once the shop is back up, we’ll be sending any missed Milestone Rewards to affected players based upon their in-game spending.”

Q: In the Sanctum Showdown badge on the main screen, it says 6 days, 23 hours remaining. Within the mode itself, it says 1 Week, 1 Day. Which is correct?
A: Griffin “It’s kind of both. The event itself lasts for 7 days but the Shop will remain open for an extra day.”

Q: What happens if a player tries to buy the Sanctum Showdown variants, but they already bought it the first time around?
A: Griffin “It SHOULD provide an ERROR message and not allow you to redeem your Charms for them.”

Q: The blog said the old Wong, Strange and Mordo variants in SS would be priced at 1000 charms, but only Mordo costs that, ans the other ones cost 1200. Which one is the correct price?
A: Glenn “The blog price is correct. We’re looking into solutions for incorrect prices of 1200 Charms.”

Update on the Xorn variant and Ancient One base art from Second Dinner:

Xorn – “Frank Quitely” Variant
This previously released Xorn Variant was misattributed and we quickly removed it from appearing in players’ Shops or other means of acquisition. We plan on replacing this Variant with another new Variant in a future update. Once it’s released, those who purchased the previous version may contact Customer Support to request a full refund and removal of the Variant from their Collection.

The Ancient One
After receiving reports about the base card’s art including designs from other owned IP, we are working on removing and replacing those specific elements. This change will be reflected in a future update.

Thank you for bringing these issues to our attention!

Q: For players who bought the Variant, will they get a new variant automatically replaced?
A: Griffin “You are correct. The new version will replace the current one automatically in your Collection. If you don’t like the new one either, you can request a full refund.”

Q: Will the new Xorn variant be by Frank Quietly, since many players got the Variant because of that selling point?
A: Glenn “It will almost certainly not be, but that isn’t finalized just yet. This is why we’re offering refunds to those who did purchase it.”

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: Can you add a Snap Pack protection so collection complete players can’t accidentally spend 1,000 tokens with a misclick?
A: This is considered “a suggestion” on the Q/A channel, but I’ve submitted the suggestion for you so they can look into that!

Q: Can you look into a better rotation system for Collector Vault variants so we don’t get the same ones each time?
A: Griffin “We’re definitely looking into improvements for the Vault around these issues. We appreciate your feedback.”

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!