- Hamster Kombat has banned millions of players from its platform.
- The game accused these players of multiple violations.
- Affected players didn’t take it lightly as they joined disgruntled “honest” players to criticize the airdrop campaign.
Hamster Kombat, the viral Telegram-based clicker game whose craze recently irked governments and law enforcement agencies globally, has found itself on the receiving end of frustrated players, only a few days after completing its Season 1 airdrop campaign.
Built on The Open Network (TON), Hamster Kombat features engaging gameplay, in which users assume the role of a crypto exchange CEO and amass virtual coins by tapping the “Hamster,” completing missions, and playing other mini-games within its bot.
The game’s ease of access via the Telegram messaging app, along with the dangled hope of cashing out crypto rewards after earning millions of coins, made it popular, attracting as many as 300 million players since its launch in March.
But, as the big day for cashing out nears, Hamster Kombat’s hype seems to be fizzling out, partly due to a controversial airdrop allocation criterion, which saw millions of players banned from the platform.
Hamster Kombat Bans 2.3 Million Players
Barely a day after users reported receiving HMSTR token allocations, Hamster Kombat announced that it had banned 2.3 million players for cheating in the game’s season 1 airdrop campaign. This number is nearly equivalent to the entire population of Rome; highlighting the significant scale of the crackdown.
The clicker game said it caught the cheating players after analyzing users’ behavior for months before the TGE. During which, it uncovered multiple instances of foul play. In one case, a user linked over 400 accounts to a single Binance address, while another invited over 2,000 friends, all of whom were flagged by Hamster Kombat’s anti-cheat system.
“Cheaters don’t belong in our community. They automate their selling through software to get an advantage over regular players. We care about our players and market participants, especially long-term holders, and want to protect them.” Hamster Kombat wrote on X.
Per the announcement, Hamster Kombat has taken away 6.8 billion tokens from the 2.3 million banned players, reminding newbies that there is no free money in crypto. The game said it distributed half these tokens among honest players and vowed to burn the remaining 50%.
While the move is commendable, as it promoted fairness, it also left users angry and bewildered. The same could be said for “honest” players, who similarly expressed frustration, questioning why they received fewer tokens than expected.
Why Hamster Kombat Players Are Angry
Various critics on X expressed their disappointment with Hamster Kombat once it became clear that only 43% of the 300 million players would receive HMSTR tokens. This included Web3 analyst Crypto Pioneer, who faulted the game’s reliance on the detection of a “key-generating bot” as the primary criterion for excluding cheating players.
The analyst claimed that banned users received the “cheating is bad” badge in their accounts, “randomly”, but were still allowed to play, only to be barred at the end of the season.
Another user claimed that the Hamster Kombat team allocated the majority of the airdrop to influencers and referrals, discriminating against players who worked hard to improve their Point Per Hour (PHP) metrics.
Amid the escalating tensions, Hamster Kombat launched an “Interlude Season,” inviting players to farm diamonds, which are expected to influence the next airdrop.
Stay updated on OKX’s move to add HMSTR to pre-market futures:
OKX Adds Hamster Kombat’s HMSTR Token to New Pre-Market Futures
Read how Hamster Kombat’s craze raised global authority concerns:
TON’s Hamster Kombat Craze Raises Global Authority Concerns
