Hamster Kombat Announces Details of Airdrop, 2.3M Accounts Banned for Cheating

Hamster Kombat’s first season has officially wrapped up. Since its launch in March 2024, it has drawn in over 300 million users.

A massive 131 million players qualified for the September 26 airdrop, with 60% of the allocation distributed immediately.

60 Billion Tokens up for Distribution

The Hamster Kombat team made the announcement in a September 22 post on X. They said that 75 billion of the 100 billion HMSTR tokens available had been reserved for the community.

Of that number, 60 billion will become available for distribution after the end of Season 1 of the game, with users receiving slightly more than 53 billion tokens during the airdrop.

According to the post, the team will vest the remaining 6.75 billion tokens and unlock them ten months after HMSTR is listed. Furthermore, the team noted that it would airdrop the other 15% that made up the community allocation during the game’s Season 2.

While the airdrop is slated for September 26, it was noted that more than 30 million users have not picked a method for withdrawing their tokens. However, such players were assured that they could still claim the allocations.

Users Raise Questions Over Disqualifications

In the aftermath of Hamster Kombat’s announcement, several users have expressed displeasure at how the season ended. One of the biggest points of contention revolves around the Telegram-based clicker game’s statement that it had disqualified about 2.3 million players for suspected cheating.

While the post did not explain the mechanism used to check out those suspected of gaming the system, it caught many active participants off guard, including players who claim to have invested months farming keys and accumulating rewards.

Several such users took to social media following the announcement, expressing their dismay over what they described as a harsh penalty. Web3 analyst Crypto Pioneer questioned why the sole criteria for excluding active users was a “key-generating bot.”

The detractor claimed that although many accounts had been warned, they were not permanently banned. Many of them reportedly received a “Cheating is Bad” achievement badge, with no information on its implications for the final token issuance.

Others, like crypto educator Crypto with Khan, argued that while regular players toiled building their Point Per Hour (PPH) metric, token distribution was heavily skewed toward referrals and influencers.

By the time of going to press, Hamster Kombat had not responded to any of the accusations made against it. The game is currently in an “Interlude Season.” This phase allows players to earn additional rewards, particularly diamonds, which will reportedly play a major role in the game’s next phase.

While HMSTR is still unlisted, it has a futures contract that was trading on OKX at $0.009279 at the time of writing. The price represents a nearly 95% plunge across one month, with the contract selling for as high as $0.010 at one point.