Kitty Pryde indeed lived up to her lore and decided to crash many devices that were used to play Marvel Snap. Nah, don’t be afraid, those were not some serious crashes. They were luckily limited only to Steam, Android, and iOS clients which kept crashing during certain interactions players would do with Kitty Pryde.
What Happened With Kitty Pryde in Marvel Snap?
Well, Second Dinner decided to innovate in Marvel Snap and add the possibility to drag cards from a Location back to your hand. Kitty Pryde seemed ideal for this, due to her 1337 wallhacking skillz. However, this caused issues for many players, including the most popular streamers, which had a crash fiesta in their live shows. It’s unknown why exactly this has happened, and it raises a couple of questions.
- How wasn’t this discovered during the testing (Quality Assurance)?
- Was there (sufficient) testing of this card?
- Why is the fixing taking this long?
- Why were there no actions taken regarding refunding purchases of Kitty Pryde or compensation for the wait time?
It’s (sort of) funny because Sentry is sporadically causing crashes as well when played (for similar reasons, who knows?) and the card is still in the game, not being temporarily banned, because not many players are playing it (realistically, it’s a good friend of Carnage, Deathlok, and Viper, but in a sense, those cards have much better and efficient friends to play games with, and having all four of them in a deck would not be very consistent if you catch my drift).
When is Kitty Pryde Coming Back to Marvel Snap?
We have finally gotten an update from Second Dinner. Kitty Pryde is coming back in around a month, for the big May monthly patch. Here is a full statement from Second Dinner:
Kitty Pryde Update
The recent release of Kitty Pryde didn’t go according to plan and we’ll be compensating all players to thank you for your patience during this process. Shortly after the card was enabled on live servers, we saw reports of some game-breaking issues. We disabled the card from being played in any matches, purchased in the Token Shop, or collected from the Collection Level Track until we could find a solution. Since then, we’ve been exploring fixes for Kitty Pryde’s multiple issues. However, we’ve found that in order to do so, it would involve fundamental changes to our current game engine. Instead of modifying the entire game’s ruleset or rereleasing a partially-bugged card, we’re reworking Kitty’s design to satisfy her existing gameplay synergies and goals in a simpler way.
Previous Design – Kitty Pryde:
[1/0] You can return this to your hand to gain +2 Power.
New Design – Kitty Pryde:
[1/0] When this returns to your hand, +2 Power. Returns at the start of each turn.
We need a bit more testing time to verify that everything is functioning as expected. Kitty Pryde will be returning to the game in our May patch, approximately four weeks from tomorrow. We recognize that this has been a frustrating experience for everyone, especially for players that purchased Kitty Pryde before she was disabled and haven’t had access to 6,000 Tokens. To apologize for the inconvenience, we’re taking the following steps as compensation: Later this week, current Kitty Pryde owners will receive:
- 8,000 Tokens
- Kitty Pryde Base Avatar
In the May patch, ALL players will receive the reworked Kitty Pryde for FREE We thank you for your patience as we have worked through issues with Kitty Pryde. The integrity of our card releases is important and must hit an acceptable bar that creates trust. We learned a lot through this process and will improve the quality of future releases. We are excited about Kitty Pryde’s return and look forward to seeing new decks with her included!
Quote from Second Dinner regarding Kitty Pryde
Previously on Prima:
The answer is: We don’t know. It could take them a while before they fix it. They might change her effect if they cannot fix it. Funny thing is that her ability to go through walls is more similar to the effect of an upcoming card, “Jeff the Baby Land Shark”, so if Second Dinner moves the effect of Jeff to Kitty Pryde and invents a new effect for Jeff, I officially demand royalties for the idea. Some issues in the game (admittedly, less significant than this one) exist for months without resolution.
Related: Is Marvel Snap Animals Assemble April Season Pass Worth it? – Answered
Second Dinner also claims that there will be compensations issued for this issue, but so far nothing has been done on the matter. 6000 hard-earned Collector’s Tokens are locked for many players worldwide. Remember, Token Shop has “NO REFUNDS!!!1one” plastered all over it. This is not very consumer-friendly, if you ask me, and Twitter and Reddit are already full of meme responses that the “compensation” will be something along the lines of 50 or 100 Credits. By now, they should have refunded 6000 Tokens to everyone, in my humble opinion.
I skimmed through the official Discord to find that the support team is distributing the same ol’ pre-written “canned” responses, asking people to be patient while the dev team solves this issue. Honestly, all meme posting aside, everyone just wants to play and have fun. I sincerely hope that Kitty Pryde returns by the end of this week. Hopefully, there is a solution to the part of the code that’s causing this ruckus. *cough* Jeff *cough*.
The Critique of Second Dinner and Marvel Snap in this article is here with the good intention of keeping things in check for the benefit of the community. I want this game to be a successful online card game, that will last for years upon years until all Marvel Snap characters are in the game, but there’s a long way to go to that destination. Trust is built gradually and thoroughly, and lost in seconds. I do not want to sound like a doomsayer, but I’ve experienced many games’ demises that could have been avoided.
Pre-update article text (remains for archive purposes)
It seems that they have taken the community feedback seriously and that they admitted that they made a misstep. 2000 tokens as “interest” for people who bought the card might be acceptable or not acceptable to the players, but at least it’s not a joke compensation. The new effect of Kitty Pryde is… kind of underwhelming perhaps. We’ll see if it works out in Hit Monkey Decks. Stay tuned to Prima Games for new Marvel Snap content. See you soon!
