Written by Zen, PANews
Recently, in the streets and alleys of Iran, in subway stations, taxis and buses, and even in any place, you can always see people constantly clicking on their mobile phone screens. These Iranians who seem to be having fun are probably users of Hamster Kombat. They click so mechanically and repeatedly, not for fun, but to make money.
Hamster Kombat, which has attracted tens of thousands of Iranian users, is a Telegram-based click game, the core gameplay of which is to earn coins by clicking in the game. This kind of casual game with a simple mechanism is doomed to be ignored in traditional games. However, in the cryptocurrency industry, by associating "click" with "earning money", especially after Notcoin successfully proved the value and feasibility of the "Tap to Earn" mechanism, a number of similar projects were immediately launched and achieved rapid growth. Hamster Kombat is one of the best among them, and it even has a tendency to surpass its predecessor.
On June 24, Hamster Kombat announced on the X platform that its game player base has reached 200 million, while the number of subscribers to the project's X and YouTube accounts is 9.8 million and 28.7 million respectively. From the perspective of user scale alone, this small game, which was only launched in March this year, is undoubtedly the most popular phenomenon-level project after Notcoin. However, Hamster Kombat, which has become popular in Iran recently, is obviously not "welcomed" by the local government and mainstream media.
Information Risk and "Nothing" Value Investment
Hamster Kombat's invitation mechanism is one of the main killer moves to achieve virality, which makes every user happy to invite friends to join the game and get one-time and continuous rewards from it. Hossein Delirian, spokesman for Iran's National Cyberspace Center, issued a warning about this rapid spread. He said that he had read a lot of discussions among Iranian users in many super groups recently, and said that the use of games for cryptocurrency mining has become a hotbed for hacker crimes. "As a spokesman for the National Cyberspace Center, I remind people who participate in these games to protect their information and accounts."
Esmail Qamari, deputy director of social and crime prevention at the Ilam Provincial Department of Justice, expressed doubts about the value of the project, pointing out that if the blockchain cannot be fully decentralized, it will not be credible in the field of cryptocurrency. He bluntly said: "Notcoin and Hamster Kombat have no value because they are not scarce. Due to the existence of the community and external investors, they have found some value, which makes some people happy, which makes these people bring their friends into the market, and eventually the main funds enter the pockets of investors from outside the narrative."
The controversy has also attracted attention from religious circles, with prominent Shia scholar Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi describing cryptocurrencies as "the source of many evils" and urging people to avoid playing games like Hamster Kombat that involve Bitcoin.
Is the enemy using "nipple pleasure" to paralyze the Iranian people?
In addition to expressing concerns about the security of information and funds, Dr. Alireza Chabkeru, a professor at the University of Tehran, also expressed concerns about the decline of thought and culture. "New phenomena such as artificial intelligence or games of this style have taken away people's attention." He believes that in an era when clicking on mobile phone screens has become one of the main activities of many people during the day and in their free time, the domination of cyberspace over people's thoughts and its degradation are felt more deeply. "Virtual space puts people at the biological level of eating, sleeping and breathing. This is an ever-expanding vicious cycle. Today, people's concerns, worries and goals have become very superficial under the influence of cyberspace, which is very dangerous."
Hamster Kombat has also been interpreted as the enemy's "software war", and Habibollah Sayyari, deputy chief of staff of the Iranian army, has criticized it more fiercely. At a time when Iran's national election is approaching, the people lack enthusiasm for the election. He believes that Hamster Kombat is intended to divert people's attention from major national events and is part of a broader strategy. "One of the characteristics of the enemy's software war is the 'hamster' game." He said that the purpose of this game is to divert the public's attention from the presidential campaign and encourage a culture of laziness.
How ordinary people make a living in a difficult economic situation
Due to Western sanctions, Iran has long faced problems such as high inflation, currency depreciation, reduced employment opportunities and increased poverty. According to data released by the World Bank, about 9.5 million Iranians fell into poverty in the first 10 years of the 21st century. Faced with macroeconomic difficulties, many Iranians are looking for other ways to protect their financial management and are gradually taking a positive attitude towards cryptocurrency, an emerging risk asset.
The unprecedented popularity of Hamster Kombat in Iran reminds people of the glorious days of Axie Infinity in Southeast Asia. In the midst of unemployment in the Philippines, Axie Infinity players can earn an average of more than $300 a month through the game, which is higher than the local average salary. Many of these players are low-income people living in slums.
Iran's state-run media JameJam criticized the popularity of Hamster Kombat, saying: "If a society does not work hard and make money, but instead plays this kind of game, looking for shortcuts and huge profits, then this society will gradually lose the culture of hard work and entrepreneurship."
However, for the lower-class people who have been in a long-term economic downturn, perhaps they no longer care too much after working hard and becoming numb, and all kinds of worries and concerns have nothing to do with them. Even after participating in Hamster Kombat for several months, in the end it was just a spectacle of a "mirage".
