Hamster Kombat Airdrop Backlash — Will It Affect Upcoming HMSTR Token Release?

• Players will receive 88.75% of the HMSTR airdrop and must wait ten months to receive the remaining 11.25%.
• Hamster Kombat has announced a season 2, which promises a 15 billion HMSTR airdrop.
• Hamster Kombat “Season 2” will begin after a two-week “Interlude Season”.

Telegram play-to-airdrop superstar gaming app Hamster Kombat is under fire after it made some bombshell announcements regarding its highly anticipated Sept. 26 airdrop.

Hamster Kombat Airdrop

The HMSTR airdrop is facing backlash from the community after the Hamster Kombat team announced some last-minute adjustments to the HMSTR airdrop .

Per the post, the original 60 billion HMSTR tokens reserved for the “Season 1” airdrop will now be split into two pots.

Players will now only receive 88.75% of the airdrop “immediately” during the airdrop. They will have to wait until 2025 to secure the final amount, as the remaining 11.25% will be vested for ten months following the exchange listings.

Naturally,  players are furious, as they have followed Hamster Kombat’s instructions for months to maximize their returns on what was billed as “the largest airdrop in crypto history.”

Aside from allocating too much to YouTubers and influencers, it is also under fire for giving greater rewards to player referrals and invites rather than playing the game itself. But matters worsened as the Hamster Kombat “anti-cheating strategy” seems to have accidentally disqualified tonnes of players who claim they didn’t cheat.

Anti-Cheating Backlash

This has seen players receive the “cheating is bad” in-game achievement. On top of this, Hamster Kombat says that 2.3 million players have been banned from the airdrop.

It’s unknown if this achievement is the ban rollout, or if the achievement is simply a warning shot to some account.  But, what is cheating according to Hamster Kombat? Who knows.

Initially, players had thought the primary airdrop-qualifying factor was to produce the most in-game points, but the strategies they’ve used to do so have caught them in the crosshairs of the anti-cheat plan.

Now, with a “Season 2” ahead, the team at Hamster Kombat has seemingly taken a play out of the Catizen playbook, which made similarly bold and controversial moves during their airdrop campaign.

Catizen (CATI) Airdrop

Catizen (CATI) was another huge Telegram/TON-based game that drew millions of players and dollars ahead of its airdrop campaign. However, a last-minute adjustment of the airdrop allocations and future plans left players with a bitter taste in their mouths.

After initially promising a 43% airdrop allocation, the CATI Binance listing soaked up 9% of that figure, leaving 34%, or 340,000,000 CATI tokens, for the players. However, only 15% of that figure would be distributed in the airdrop, as there will now be multiple seasons of Catizen airdrops.

This was never mentioned in the whitepaper or roadmap and only revealed moments before the airdrop took place. Furthermore, player rewards didn’t seem to make sense, with some paying players receiving far fewer CATI tokens than those who didn’t invest funds into the game.

HMSTR in Trouble?

At this point, it’s hard to tell if the HMSTR  Sept. 26 airdrop and exchange listing will be affected by this.

CATI, which began trading on Sept. 20, 2024, is performing pretty well. With a total supply of 1 billion, there are currently 305 million CATI in circulation. The CATI token is  presently trading for around $0.77, which is pretty good.

Looking at trading volumes, CATI is ranked 22nd, with $335 million traded in the last 24 hours. All things considered, this is pretty solid for a game that built its success – in part – from the buzz generated by HMSTR.

For comparison, Catizen pulled in around 40 million players, and Hamster Kombat pulled in over 300 million players, around half of which qualified for the airdrop. With a supply of 100 billion HMSTR, 60% will be distributed this season, and a further 15% allocated for Season 2, which would give HMSTR a sizeable circulating supply upon listing.