The prospective Hamster Kombat airdrop is facing risks of further delays due to internal conflicts within the team. Local media reports claim that the Hamster Kombat team is dealing with multiple issues from investors and influencers over profits.
There are concerns that these conflicts could remove the team’s focus from its planned airdrop. The ongoing issues have led to a drop in HMSTR prices on pre-market trading across several exchanges. The token has endured a decline of more than 50% from its peak on the OKX exchange.
Hamster Kombat faces internal issues with investors and promoters
According to a now-deleted article by Lenta.ru, the Hamster Kombat team is involved in a conflict with an investor, AD.RU, over profit sharing. AD.RU played a crucial role in Hamster Kombat’s development through an investment of $600,000 and marketing efforts to secure over $1 million in funding in exchange for a 25% stake in the project. Both parties intended to develop another game called Arenum.
AD.RU CEO Anton Gorshkov claims that his company and other investors have not seen any share of the profits from the games even as their popularity has grown.
However, Hamster Kombat lead Eduard Gurinovich denied in June that AD.RU played a role. The media report shows that Hamster Kombat used technical resources meant for Arenum.
Hamster Kombat is also facing issues with its promoters. The project marketing head, Nikita Anuriev, left earlier this month, citing differences. Anuriev, a YouTube blogger, said the project promised him 25% of the profits for promoting it and attracting several decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to invest early in the project.
Anuriev accused the Hamster Kombat team of refusing to share profits with them. Instead, it refunded the early investors and stopped associating with the influencers who promoted it to become popular.
He said:
“The situation inside and around the project is heating up. At the moment, I refuse to disclose the details of the exit from the project, but perhaps in the near future, I will be forced to share information if nothing changes for security reasons for users, influencers, and investors so that they can make calm and independent decisions.”
Meanwhile, some investors and early partners are considering suing the project to get a share of the revenue. Gorshkov said AD.RU will explore legal solutions to the problem and has already sent pre-trial claims to the Hamster Kombat team.
HMSTR falls in pre-market; users worry about airdrop
With the threat of lawsuits hanging over the project, community members have genuine concerns that the HMSTR airdrop might not happen or see further delays. The team has hyped the HMSTR airdrop as potentially the biggest airdrop ever and blamed previous delays on the size of the airdrop and the technical capacity of the TON network.
However, these new developments add a new side to the story and suggest that internal conflicts might be one of the factors causing the delays. They also call into question the Hamster Kombat team’s claims that it did not receive funding from any venture capital firm or external investors.
Hamster Kombat HMSTR Pre-market Price (Source: Bitget)
Meanwhile, the HMSTR token, trading on pre-market futures on a few exchanges, has declined from its peak value. At its peak, the token was trading around $0.26. Now, it is $0.169 on OKX and $0.187 on ByBit.
Despite the project’s controversies, it continues to launch new products for users. Hamster Kombat recently announced an in-game card in partnership with Crypto.com. However, most users appeared tired of waiting for the airdrop. Most comments under its X (formerly Twitter) posts are people asking for an airdrop date, with some even offering to sell off their coins.