Actor: Anna Kharton, Olivia Capozzalo
Compiled by: Zen, PANews
Whether you’re one of the most devoted players of Hamster Kombat, the Telegram-based click-to-earn game, or you’re completely indifferent to it. The buzz surrounding the game has been real since its release this spring.
There is Notcoin. Since the number of registered accounts of "Hamster Kombat" reached tens of millions, most of the news about this game has begun to focus on the release and price prediction of its native token HMSTR. Now, as the game ends its first season since launching in March, players are accusing the team of unfair treatment and accusing it of false promises.
As of last weekend, the resources accumulated by players as part of the game's promised reward system have been converted into HMSTR tokens, which are expected to be sent in the form of airdrop tokens at the time of TGE. The gaming team also revealed more information about token supply and distribution in a Platform X post. The team said that of the planned supply of 100 billion HMSTR tokens to be minted, 75% will be reserved for the community and 60% of the tokens will be distributed to the game’s users at the end of the first season.
According to the team’s post on the It is locked and can only be unlocked 10 months after the token is listed on the exchange. The team has also committed to airdrop an additional 15% of the 100 billion tokens during the upcoming second season of Hamster Kombat.
Since March, the game has had as many as 300 million users, according to the Hamster Kombat team. Of those users, only a fraction of the 131 million players are eligible to receive token rewards in the highly anticipated airdrop, which is currently scheduled for September 26th. In addition, 2.3 million players were identified as cheating users and were completely banned from participating in the token distribution.
Disappointing token distribution
Since the announcement from the Hamster Kombat team on Sunday, many users have expressed their dissatisfaction with the token distribution process and standards on the .
The HMSTR token will be listed on exchanges and open for trading later this week following the airdrop, but several major exchanges are already conducting pre-market trading of the HMSTR token for spot and futures contracts. Its price ranges from 0.01 USDT to 0.1 USDT on different platforms, leaving players confused as to the actual value of the tokens they are allocated.
Judging from comments in the community, based on the highest USDT price on each exchange, the average user will get less than $50 for hundreds of hours of gaming time.
A player in the Telegram community nicknamed Timbo said he has been playing the game almost from the beginning, playing the game for about 4-5 hours a day for two months, earning about 500 tokens. Over time, the buzz around this game and the upcoming token release has continued to grow, which means that more and more players are being promised a token distribution at release. "My interest faded over time. The game itself wasn't that interesting. As for the potential gains, I wasn't expecting much - the number of players had become huge and everyone needed to be rewarded ” Timbo said.
"Cheater" determination raises doubts
Another bigger wave of negative sentiment came when Hamster Kombat announced it would exclude 2.3 million players from the token distribution. According to the project, the ban is in response to users who allegedly try to gain gaming revenue through unfair means, such as using multiple devices to click, playing from different accounts, or cheating through recommendations. The project team also gave an example: “One person connected more than 400 accounts to the same Binance address, and another person invited nearly 2,000 ‘friends’, and these friends were all marked by our anti-cheating system.”
However, the criteria for judging some of these cheating seems controversial, with one of the most shocking penalties being the purchase of keys. Keys are important game props introduced later, which also have a higher weight in airdrops. In the rules of the game, users need to obtain the key by completing a mini-game, but some players choose to purchase directly with krypton gold, skipping the mini-game. The Hamster Kombat game system allows users to purchase keys without any warning or explanation that this is a hint of a violation. However, this behavior was apparently recognized as “cheating” in the airdrop and allegedly resulted in players being banned from obtaining tokens.
Several members of the "Hamster Kombat" Telegram chat group posted a message that included this paragraph:
"Some of my friends have done nothing wrong and have been wrongly put on the list of cheaters. This injustice has severely damaged the trust of the community and created an atmosphere of distrust."
The players, who were recognized by the project side as violating the so-called “rules of the game,” were given a simple status at the end of the first season: “Cheating is bad.” Telegram group chats in the Hamster Kombat community were immediately flooded with complaints No, everyone believed the distribution standard was unfair and asked the administrator to reconsider and distribute the tokens. Users on Telegram expressed displeasure at suddenly being labeled cheating at the end of the season, noting that they had already spent a lot of time on the game.
"When the project first started, no one knew there would be any violations, and at the end of the project, there was a sudden ban and the tokens were distributed to fewer people under ridiculous excuses." A person who claimed to be a player said in On the X platform, he complained that he had been playing for four months, collected more than 200 keys, earned 8.36 million HMSTR per hour, set up a coaxing clock and tracked the "rise time" of the cards. "Now you tell me I don't deserve it. The Hamster Kombat is a liar."
Meanwhile, the hashtag#boycotthamsterkombat(boycott Hamster Kombat) is trending on the X platform – with more than 22,000 tweets at the time of writing.
How is token allocation determined?
According to community reports, the number of tokens players receive is determined based on the following criteria:
The number of coins collected by the user throughout the period
Number of friends invited by users to join the game
Number of coins users receive through passive income
The number of keys the user has won in mini-games
Number of daily tasks completed by users
Tokens in the Hamster Kombat game are divided into several categories: Total HMSTR, Claimed, Next Unlocked, and Unclaimed. However, the game does not provide explanations for these different categories.
It turns out that the most important task that determines the number of tokens each player receives is not the passive income of HMSTR tokens earned by playing the game, but the number of friends invited through referral links. Judging by comments on social media, regular users are the most unhappy with the token distribution logic, as they spend a lot of time actually playing the game, trying to get into the top 100 players, completing missions, etc. These players are the core of the community and may not have an extensive social network like YouTube celebrities. They can invite "friends" by sharing referral links and earn more tokens.
Did Hamster Kombat fool everyone? With a massive token distribution plan and reported user statistics, the game remains on track to deliver one of the largest airdrops in crypto. Players who have linked their wallets to their Hamster Kombat accounts are expected to receive their allocation of tokens during this week’s airdrop event, which can then be traded on major exchanges such as Binance and OKX.
Considering the large number of users reportedly playing Hamster Kombat, it's perhaps unsurprising that players are receiving fewer tokens than expected. With the total token supply capped at 100 billion and a reported user base of hundreds of millions of users, the math becomes at least somewhat clear, albeit disappointing for most players.
Regardless, the value of users’ earnings in fiat won’t be truly clear until the HMSTR token goes live for spot trading on September 26 and players actually receive their long-awaited tokens.
Russian experts say the coin will face selling pressure
According to RTVI, Viktor Pershikov, an independent expert on fighting financial crime in the crypto field, said that those who "want to get rich by playing Hamster Kombat" "find their expectations frustrated." The outlet noted that many people were disappointed to learn that "after months of playing the game," they would "only get $5 to $15" in return for their efforts. Pershikov also said that the game and its team "never promised to make anyone rich," and that when players eventually start trading their HMSTR tokens for fiat, the token price "will come under pressure."
Telegram is the preferred chat application for most citizens in Russia, and the popular game "Hamster Kombat" is naturally very popular in Russia. Some players in the country have even purchased fascia guns to enhance their knocking abilities. Many e-commerce sellers have also taken advantage of this trend to promote the "hamster-knocking" effect of their fascia guns, thus promoting the sales growth of these fascia guns on Russian e-commerce platforms.
The Russian information and socio-political electronic newspaper "Fontanka.ru" reported on "Hamster Kombat" on September 22, saying that the "eight-year-old son" of one of its employees "mined" "Bitcoin" for a total of 120 days. . In the end, the boy's "income was about 4.3 rubles ($0.046)."
Some commentators expressed their dissatisfaction in the comments section of Fontantka Ru's article, with one Russian social media user lamenting: "How did we go from being the most read and educated country in the world to where we are now?"
〈Token distribution causes trouble, how does the hamster game "Hamster Kombat" offend players? 〉This article was first published in "Block Guest".
