Hamster Kombat Players May Barely Get $10 After Chaotic Airdrop 

Key takeaways:

Most of the people who played the viral crypto game Hamster Kombat will likely earn a maximum of just $10 each when the HMSTR token starts trading on exchanges like Binance and OKX on Thursday, Sept. 26, at 12:00 PM UTC.

It comes after the game’s airdrop – a type of free cryptocurrency giveaway in which tokens are deposited (airdropped) into user wallets – was rocked by controversy earlier this week, with allegations of unfair distribution.

“Cheating is bad,” the developers of Hamster Kombat said in a card sent out to 2.3 million disqualified users in September. The studio heads were cleaning the house to protect the rewards of legit gamers ahead of the airdrop and token launch on The Open Network (TON).

But now, the fair play card has been returned to the sender, as both banned and eligible players accuse the Hamster Foundation, creators of Hamster Kombat, of cheating them out of their hard-earned allocations.

Only 43% of users, or 131 million people, who played the game since its March 26 launch as a mini-app on Telegram received the HMSTR airdrop. Some 2.3 million users were banned for cheating, and the majority of them did not meet the criteria. Hamster Kombat claims to have 300 million players, making it the biggest “clicker game.”

At issue is a last-minute announcement that 11.25% of the 60 billion HMSTR tokens allocated to community members for Season 1 will be locked for 10 months – meaning users will not be able to sell those tokens before the end of the lock-up period.

Other points of contention include the small size of the token allocation to regular players, the banning of some legitimate gamers, and influencers individually pocketing a bigger airdrop than community members.

Following the publication of airdrop allocation results on Sept. 21, hard-done users are going at the popular game with hashtags like #BoycottHamster and #HamsterIsScammer.

Hamster Kombat (HMSTR) Token Price Prediction

Kir Gusev is a former vice president of investment bank Troika Dialog and has been trading and building crypto projects for over a decade. Speaking to Cryptonews, Gusev, who is also CEO of Tron-based meme coin VIKITA, suggested that the Hamster Kombat team did not have enough money for the airdrop. He said:

“It was obvious since May. If you have 300 million users and you airdrop an average of just $10 per user, you will have to distribute $3 billion. It’s impossible.”

Per their official Telegram channel, the Hamster Foundation embarked on a sweep to eliminate bots and maximize the reward for real players. Gusev argues that it was not enough, going down from the viral user base.

“Even if you exclude a lot of ‘bots’ and decrease this amount [$10 per user] from 300 million to 70 million users who receive the airdrop – it’s $700 million and still impossible. So in this case, the lock-up period is the only solution for the team to avoid the chart dumping dramatically [at launch].”

According to some estimates, the HMSTR token will likely see high volatility when the token, which got listed on Binance’s Launchpool, hits the market.

Early predictions put HMSTR’s price at between $0.001 and $0.005 per token based on previous Binance Launchpool listings and the euphoria that comes with the platform’s play-to-earn (P2E) features.

For example, if you have 1,000 HMSTR tokens, your potential earnings will be just $1 – $5 after three to four months of furiously tapping your screen as a fictional exchange CEO – the title given to Hamster Kombat players.

Crypto analyst Gautamgg compared Hamster Kombat to Notcoin, the first tap-to-earn project to launch on the TON blockchain. NOT, the native token of Notcoin, listed at a price of $0.0075 and reached a market cap of $700 million. Like HMSTR, Notcoin has a total supply of around 100 billion tokens, but only 80% of the supply was distributed via the airdrop.

Gautamgg expects that the HMSTR token will list at a price of between $0.008 to $0.009 per token, in the range of NOT. Based on the circulating supply of about 60 billion tokens, he projected that HMSTR token’s first-day total market cap would be between $504 million and $567 million.

The token’s fully diluted valuation (FDV) – a measure of its future value should all HMSTR tokens enter circulation – is estimated at between $800 million and $900 million.

Gautamgg’s predictions suggest that if you have 1,000 HMSTR tokens, they will likely be valued at $8 at listing, based on the price of $0.008 per token. He expects that the price will nosedive soon after listing.

Posting on X, the analyst criticized the Hamster Kombat team for “lacking experience”. He said the team is “unprofessional” because it “relied on referral codes” to decide airdrop allocations. The token also “lacks utility”, he alleged, and the team “falsified its whitepaper”.

Meanwhile, more optimistic Hamster Kombat price predictions based on pre-market trading on exchanges like Bybit and Gate.io put the HMSTR token listing price in the range of $0.0568 and $0.07. At this price, investors holding 1,000 HMSTR tokens will get around $70. As of this writing, HMSTR token was trading at $0.0677 on Gate.io in pre-market.

Can the Hamster Kombat Team Rebuild Community Confidence?

Reactions on social media show that most users who received the HMSTR airdrop received a pittance. Hamster Kombat player and self-proclaimed crypto YouTuber Ajay Kashyap, who has over 330,000 subscribers to his channel, expressed his disapproval on X.

He said, “After 4-5 months of wasting time on it, many users received” only between 100 and 5,000 HMSTR tokens.

“Hamster Kombat, where’s the ‘biggest airdrop in history you promised?’” he quipped. In July, the Hamster Foundation described its then-upcoming airdrop as the “largest airdrop in the history of crypto.”

But the team has not addressed the viral complaints, except for taking the high road in response to players claiming they were wrongfully banned.

The Hamster Kombat team continues to maintain its community-first approach, which has defined their communications since they captured the web3 spotlight with 100 million players in the game’s first month.

While the ethos of decentralization has mostly faded in today’s crypto scene, Hamster Kombat frequently gives it a nod. The team declined venture capital offers, instead finding confidence in their own community support.

To hear them tell it, Hamster Kombat is “a worldwide family,” not just a game, and they are committed to “the long-term power of the community.”

After the controversy surrounding the airdrop – many users are calling for the game to be boycotted and its influencers to be unfollowed.

Gusev, the VIKITA CEO, thinks that such community soft power is dead. He told Cryptonews:

“I feel Hamster Kombat is already dead for the community – it’s impossible to rebuild trust because the expectations didn’t meet. But the team can dramatically pump it (if they have enough money). Growing [the price] chart is most trustable always and for everyone.”

An X user, Kumar Praveen, added his voice to the growing choir of Hamster Kombat skeptics. He noted how the game’s metrics changed from rewarding profit-per-hour to rewarding the use of keys. The keys were obtained through earn tasks that redirected users to YouTube, PlayStore and so on, which brought in revenue for Hamster Kombat.

While keys and profit-per-hour remained in play, airdrop token allocations appeared to favor referrals that were initially capped at 100. In the end, the community was still left in the cold because the studio “implemented vesting for tokens, which was never part of their original plan and was not officially announced.”

In light of this, the real winners, judged on visibility and profit, were Telegram, The Open Network, other TON mini-apps, major exchanges, social media influencers and YouTubers.

The Hamster Foundation’s Next Frontier

The official launch on Thursday will mark the close of Season 1, to be immediately followed by Interlude, connecting to Season 2. According to developers, September 26 will see Hamster Kombat transform from a game into a gaming platform. NFTs and the ability to reward in-game currency into tokens will also be incorporated.

A number of crypto projects have struggled to survive beyond airdrop as members immediately cash out, leading to a sharp drop in price. It would seem the Hamster Kombat team is playing a game of cold calculus with the unilateral decision to lock up tokens.

In a previous interview, the developers said a strong token price would serve as a source of staying power after the airdrop.

“We think that the token, which will belong to millions of users throughout the world, holds a huge value in itself,” they predicted.

According to the team, Hamster Kombat is inspired by meme stocks, social media games from the 2010s, and web3 successes like Notcoin. That means the viral appeal is at the heart of the game.

Why Spoil the Influencers?

The Hamster Kombat player is a crypto CEO persona who must grow his company’s stock by tapping to upgrade assets, hiring top talent and so on. As far as crypto basics, the game serves as “education through immersion.”

Unlike other tap-to-play games that can be easily exploited, Hamster Kombat introduces elements of strategy and immersive gameplay. Referrals, and particularly influencers, have played a significant role in driving the success of this type of game.

Praveen panned the influencers who helped sell the Hamster Kombat propaganda of a “record-breaking airdrop”.

“There are numerous videos of YouTubers guaranteeing “lakhs” in airdrops from HMSTR but now blaming the Hamster Kombat team while pretending to support the community,” Praveen said.

He also referred to instances of willed deception, such as influencer promises of up to $1,000 rewards for new users.

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