The Token Distribution Controversy Hamster Kombat Game Stirs Up Trouble with Players

Coin World News Report:
Before the official airdrop, the distribution details of the HMSTR token of “Hamster Kombat”, which claims to have 300 million players, have been widely resisted and protested by many players.
By Anna Kharton, Olivia Capozzalo
Translated by Zen, PANews
Whether you are a loyal player of “Hamster Kombat”, a Telegram-based click-to-earn game, or you completely ignore it, the popularity surrounding this game has been real since its release in the spring of this year.
With the presence of Notcoin, since “Hamster Kombat” registered accounts reached tens of millions, most of the news about this game has been focused on the release and price prediction of its native token HMSTR. Now, as the first season of the game has ended since its launch in March, players have started accusing the team of unfair treatment and false promises.
As of last weekend, as part of the game’s promised rewards system, the resources accumulated by players have been converted into HMSTR tokens, which are expected to be distributed in the form of airdropped tokens at TGE. The game team also revealed more information about token supply and distribution in posts on the X platform. The team stated that out of the planned supply of 100 billion HMSTR tokens, 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 X platform, this “hamster math” is still ongoing: out of the 60% HMSTR tokens supplied to users, 88.75% will be distributed in this week’s token airdrop and listing, and the remaining portion will be locked and can only be unlocked 10 months after the token is listed on the exchange. The team also promised to airdrop an additional 15% of 100 billion tokens during the upcoming second season of “Hamster Kombat”.
Since March, according to the “Hamster Kombat” team, the game has had up to 300 million users. Among these users, only about half of the 131 million players are eligible to receive token rewards in the highly anticipated airdrop, which is scheduled for September 26th. In addition, 2.3 million players have been identified as cheating users and are completely banned from token distribution.
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Disappointing token distribution
Since the announcement by the “Hamster Kombat” team on Sunday, many users have expressed their dissatisfaction with the token distribution process and criteria on the X platform, believing that the number of tokens they received is much lower than the time and effort they put into it.
The HMSTR token will be listed and available for trading on exchanges later this week after the airdrop, but several mainstream exchanges have already conducted pre-market trading of HMSTR token spot and futures contracts. The price of the token varies from 0.01 USDT to 0.1 USDT on different platforms, leaving players confused about the actual value of the tokens they received.
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Based on comments from the community, ordinary users have earned less than $50 in profit from spending hundreds of hours playing the game, based on the highest USDT price on various exchanges.
A player nicknamed Timbo in the Telegram community of “Hamster Kombat” claimed that he has been playing the game almost since the beginning, playing the game for about 4-5 hours a day for two months, and earning about 500 tokens. Over time, as the hype around the game and the upcoming token release grew, more and more players were promised token distributions upon release. “Over time, my interest gradually diminished. The game itself is not that interesting. As for potential earnings, I didn’t expect too much – the number of players has become very large, and everyone needs to be rewarded,” Timbo said.
Questioning the “cheater” judgment
Another wave of negative sentiment came when “Hamster Kombat” announced that 2.3 million players would be excluded from token distribution. According to the project team, the ban is to deal with users who are alleged to be trying to obtain game profits through improper means, such as using multiple devices to click, playing from different accounts, or engaging in cheating through recommendations. The project team also gave examples, saying, “One person connected over 400 accounts to the same Binance address, and another person invited nearly 2,000 ‘friends’ who were all flagged by our anti-cheating system.”
However, some of the criteria for determining cheating seemed controversial, and one of the most shocking penalties was for purchasing keys. Keys are important game items introduced later and have a high weight in the airdrop. In the game rules, users need to complete a mini-game to obtain keys, but some players choose to spend money to directly purchase them, bypassing the mini-game. The “Hamster Kombat” game system allows users to buy keys without any warning or indication that this is considered a violation. However, this behavior was apparently deemed “cheating” in the airdrop and allegedly led to players being banned from receiving tokens.
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Several members of the “Hamster Kombat” Telegram chat groups posted messages, including one that said:
“Some of my friends have done nothing wrong but were wrongly listed as cheaters. This injustice seriously damages the trust of the community and creates an atmosphere of mistrust.”
These players who were deemed to have violated the so-called “game rules” received a simple status of “cheating is bad” when the first season ended. The Telegram group chat of the “Hamster Kombat” community was immediately flooded with complaints, with many people believing that the distribution criteria were unfair and demanding that the administrators reconsider and distribute the tokens. Users on Telegram expressed dissatisfaction with suddenly being labeled as cheaters at the end of the season, pointing out that they had spent a lot of time on the game.
“At the start of the project, no one knew what violations there would be, and at the end of the project, suddenly there was a ban, which gave tokens to fewer people under ridiculous excuses,” complained one person who claimed to be a player on the X platform, saying that they played for four months, collected over 200 keys, earned 8.36 million HMSTR per hour, set alarms, and tracked the “rising time” of the cards. “Now you’re telling me I don’t deserve it. Hamster Kombat is a scam.”
Meanwhile, the hashtag #boycotthamsterkombat is trending on the X platform, with over 22,000 tweets as of writing this article.
How is token distribution determined?
According to community reports, the number of tokens players receive is determined by the following criteria:
The number of coins collected by users throughout the period
The number of friends users invite to join the game
The number of coins users earn through passive income
The number of keys users win in mini-games
The number of daily tasks users complete
The tokens in “Hamster Kombat” are divided into several categories: Total HMSTR, Collected, Next Unlock, and Not Collected. However, the game does not provide explanations for these different categories.
It turns out that the most important task in determining the number of tokens each player receives is not the passive income HMSTR tokens earned by playing the game, but the number of friends invited through referral links. Based on comments on social media, ordinary users are most dissatisfied with the logic of token distribution because they have spent a lot of time actually playing the game, trying to enter the top 100 players, completing tasks, etc. These players are the core of the community and may not have extensive social networks like YouTube influencers to invite “friends” through sharing referral links and earn more tokens.
Did “Hamster Kombat” deceive everyone? With a large-scale token distribution plan and reported user statistics, the game still has the potential to achieve the largest airdrop in the cryptocurrency field. Players who have linked their wallets to their “Hamster Kombat” accounts are expected to receive allocated tokens in this week’s airdrop event and can then trade them on major exchanges such as Binance and OKX.
Considering the reported large number of users playing “Hamster Kombat”, it may not be surprising that players received fewer tokens than expected. With a limited total token supply of 100 billion and a reported user base of hundreds of millions, the math becomes somewhat clear, albeit disappointing for most players.
Regardless, the true value of earnings calculated by users in fiat currency will only be realized when HMSTR tokens start trading against fiat currencies on September 26th and players actually receive the tokens they have been eagerly waiting for.
Russian experts say its tokens will face selling pressure
According to RTVI, Viktor Pershikov, an independent expert in the field of cryptocurrency crime, said that those who “wanted to get rich by playing ‘Hamster Kombat'” found themselves disappointed. The media pointed out that many people were disappointed to learn that their efforts “only yielded returns of $5 to $15” after playing the game for several months. Pershikov also stated that the game and its team “never promised to make anyone rich” and when players finally start trading their HMSTR tokens for fiat currencies, the token price “will face pressure.”
Telegram is the preferred chat application for most Russian citizens, and the explosively popular “Hamster Kombat” naturally has a high popularity in Russia. Some players in the country even bought fascia guns to enhance their tapping ability. Many e-commerce sellers also promoted the role of their fascia guns in “hitting hamsters,” thereby promoting the sales of these fascia guns on Russian e-commerce platforms.
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The Russian information and socio-political electronic newspaper “Fontanka.ru” reported on “Hamster Kombat” on September 22nd, stating that the “eight-year-old son” of an employee had “mined” “bitcoins” for a total of 120 days. In the end, the boy’s “income was about 4.3 rubles ($0.046).”
Some commenters expressed their dissatisfaction in the comments section of the Fontanka Ru article, with one Russian social media user lamenting, “How did we go from being the most educated country in the world to what we are today?”