Hamster Kombat, the leading tap-to-earn crypto game on Telegram by user numbers, announced on Tuesday through its mini app that the first season of in-game rewards will end on September 20, ahead of the upcoming token launch and airdrop set for next week.

According to an in-game notification, "Season 1 ends on September 20," and all player achievements up to that date "will be converted into HMSTR tokens." The game urges players to "level up quickly" before the deadline. The team had previously outlined the criteria for how the tokens will be allocated.

In a Telegram community post shared on Tuesday, the Hamster Kombat team mentioned that a "snapshot" of players' in-game earnings and status will be taken at 6 PM UTC on September 20. They also confirmed that a second season of in-game rewards will begin after the airdrop.

Hamster Kombat is set to launch its HMSTR token on The Open Network (TON) on September 26, allowing players to claim an airdrop. The game has claimed to have over 300 million total players, with Telegram app data indicating 94 million active players in the past month, making it the most-played game on Telegram.

Although the HMSTR token launch is eagerly awaited by the crypto gaming community, there are concerns that it could strain the TON network. In late August, TON experienced two periods of downtime due to a token claim for a smaller project, raising fears that the large-scale Hamster Kombat airdrop might cause similar disruptions.

Last week, TON Core developers acknowledged in a Telegram post that the upcoming launch of HMSTR, along with Catizen’s CATI token on September 20, could lead to "increased technical challenges and possibly some unforeseen issues" due to the high-profile nature of these token drops.