Hamster Kombat claims to have reached over 200 million players after nearly three months, but has been controversial about the stats, as well as the "exhaustion" factor of players.
Pokémon Go, the augmented reality mobile game launched by Niantic Labs in 2016, took 33 days to reach 150 million users. Meta’s Threads took six days to do the same in mid-2023. Meanwhile, a new game launched on Telegram reached 239 million users in 81 days, according to its development team on X.
Hamster Kombat game interface. Photo: Bao Lam
Hamster Kombat is a tap-to-earn game that runs on the Telegram app - a recent trend in the cryptocurrency world. Users tap on characters in the game and receive coins as rewards. To earn Hamster Coins, in addition to "tapping", players must log in daily, watch ads, watch videos, and follow YouTube and X channels... They can also refer others to earn from 5,000 coins per person to 25,000 coins if they are premium Telegram accounts. These coins are used to buy characters, buy power-up items, unlock other new features...
However, according to Cryptonomist, the biggest draw is the potential to make money from the platform. The team behind it promises an airdrop - a free distribution of cryptocurrency to network participants - in Q3 2024. The more Hamster Coins you accumulate, the higher your chances of receiving Hamster Kombat tokens.
Growing extremely fast
Despite the anonymity of its development team, Hamster Kombat has already partnered with notable names in the crypto space, including Gotbit Hedge Fund and BingX. According to an announcement on X, since its launch in March, Hamster Kombat reached one million users in 11 days. As of June 28, after 81 days on Telegram, the game has 236 million active users.
The project's YouTube channel attracted 24.7 million subscribers in its first month, and now stands at 32 million. The development team even applied to the Guinness World Records organization, wanting to be authenticated as the first YouTube channel to reach more than 10 million subscribers in a week.
A social media expert told Cointelegraph that Hamster Kombat currently earns $11 per 1,000 views through ad revenue from its YouTube channel. From its launch on May 24 to June 26, the channel has attracted 473,709,858 views and earned $5.2 million.
Data from social media analytics tool Social Blade shows that the Hamster Kombat YouTube channel has averaged 21 million views per day over the past two weeks, equivalent to $230,000 in ad revenue per day over the past 14 days.
As of July 4, Hamster Kombat's X channel had 8.5 million subscribers. Meanwhile, the game also has more than 46.8 million subscribers on Telegram - a number that is considered to be superior to any other game.
Controversial
Amidst its rapid growth, Hamster Kombat was suddenly criticized by a series of users on social networks that the team continuously implemented policies to squeeze out players.
"Recently, the frequency of requesting missions has increased, but the rewards are only one-third. The game also requires following YouTube channels and sub-channel X with meager rewards," said Hoang Uy, who has been playing the game for more than two months. In addition, the game has many new mission cards, but to open them, they need to invite more friends to join.
According to BeInCrypto, despite its large user base, the project has no specific roadmap for exchanging coins for tokens.
Meanwhile, some experts doubt the 236 million players are mostly fake accounts. On social networks, many people even use the PhoneFarm view-boosting machine to run bots, with each bot being able to support up to 1,000 different accounts.
Inal Kardan, the TON Foundation's game director, said it was "impossible" to determine the number of bots on Hamster Kombat. The game also does not require KYC. However, he estimated that the number of real players on the platform is "about 50% more than the announced number."
According to Mr. Nguyen Viet Dinh, CTO Symper and administrator of the Blockchain Popularization Forum, "In my opinion, Hamster Kombat is okay to play for fun because it is free and helps to understand more about investing in the cryptocurrency environment. However, players should only use it for entertainment, don't expect much about making money."
