Hamster Kombat, the most popular tap-to-earn crypto game on Telegram by player count, announced on Tuesday via its mini app that the first season of in-game rewards will conclude on September 20, just before the token launch and airdrop scheduled for next week.

As noted in an in-game message, “Season 1 ends on September 20,” and players' achievements up to that point “will be converted into HMSTR tokens.” The game encourages players to “level up quickly” before the deadline. The team had previously shared the criteria that will be used to determine how tokens are distributed.

In a community post on Telegram shared on Tuesday, the Hamster Kombat team revealed that it will take a “snapshot” of players' in-game earnings and status at 6 PM UTC on September 20. The team also confirmed that a second season of in-game rewards will follow the airdrop.

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

While the launch of the Hamster Kombat token is highly anticipated by crypto gamers, there are concerns that it could put a strain on the TON network. TON experienced two instances of downtime in late August due to a token claim for a smaller project, sparking fears that the large-scale Hamster Kombat airdrop could cause similar issues.

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