Milkplay or software war? TON ecosystem game Hamster Kombat, which has become popular in Iran, has caused criticism from politicians.

Author: Zen, PANews

Recently, in the streets and alleys of Iran, on subway stations, taxis, and buses, even in any place, you can always see people continuously clicking on their mobile screens tirelessly. Most of these Iranians who seem to be leisurely entertained are users of Hamster Kombat. They are mechanically repeating clicks not for the sake of enjoyment, but for making money.

Hamster Kombat, which has attracted thousands of Iranian users, is a Telegram-based clicker game where the core gameplay is to earn coins by tapping. This simple casual game mechanism would be overlooked in traditional gaming. However, in the cryptocurrency industry, after the success of Notcoin proved the value and feasibility of the ‘Tap to Earn’ mechanism, a batch of similar projects quickly launched and achieved rapid growth by associating ‘tap’ with ‘earn money’. Hamster Kombat is one of the outstanding ones, showing a trend of surpassing the original.

On June 24th, Hamster Kombat announced on the X platform that its player base has reached 200 million, and the number of subscribers to the X project and YouTube account is 9.8 million and 28.7 million respectively. From the perspective of user scale alone, this small game, which was launched in March this year, is undoubtedly the most attention-grabbing phenomenon after Notcoin. However, Hamster Kombat, which has become popular in Iran recently, is obviously not favored by the local government and mainstream media.

Information Risk and the Value of ‘Nothing’ Investment

The invitation mechanism of Hamster Kombat is one of the main tricks to achieve viral spread, which makes every user happy to invite friends to join the game and get one-time and continuous rewards from it. In the face of this rapid spread, Hossein Delirian, spokesman for the Iranian National Cyberspace Center, issued a warning, saying that he had recently read a lot of discussions by Iranian users in many supergroups, and that using games for cryptocurrency mining has become a hotbed for hacker crimes. ‘As the spokesman for the National Cyberspace Center, I remind people participating in these games to pay attention to protecting their information and accounts.’

Esmail Qamari, Deputy Director of the Department of Social Affairs and Crime Prevention at the Justice Department of Ilam Province, expressed doubts about the value of the project. He pointed out that if blockchain cannot achieve complete decentralization, it is not very trustworthy in the field of cryptocurrency. He even bluntly stated, “Notcoin and Hamster Kombat have no value because they are not scarce. Due to the existence of the community and external investors, they have found some value, which makes some people happy, and this makes these people bring their friends into the market, ultimately, the main funds enter the investors’ pockets from outside the narrative.”

This controversy has also attracted attention from the religious community, with the prominent Shiite scholar Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi describing cryptocurrency as the “root of many evils” and urging people to avoid playing games involving Bitcoin, such as Hamster Kombat.

The enemy is paralyzing the Iranian people’s “milking”?

In addition to expressing concerns about information and financial security, Dr. Alireza Chabkeru, a professor at the University of Tehran, also expressed concerns about the decline of thought and culture. “Phenomena such as artificial intelligence or games of this kind have already taken people’s attention away,” he said. He believes that in an era where tapping on the phone screen has become the main activity for many people during the day and leisure time, the dominance and degradation of people’s thoughts by cyberspace are more deeply felt. “Virtual space places people at the biological level of eating, sleeping, and breathing, and this is an expanding vicious cycle. Today, people’s concerns, worries, and goals have become very superficial under the influence of cyberspace, which is very dangerous.”

Hamster Kombat is also interpreted as the enemy’s ‘software war,’ and Habibollah Sayyari, deputy chief of the Iranian Army, has been more fiercely critical of it. At present, Iran is approaching the national elections, but the people lack enthusiasm for the elections. He believes that Hamster Kombat aims to divert public attention from major national events and is part of a broader strategy. ‘One of the characteristics of the enemy’s software warfare is the ‘hamster’ game.’ He stated that the purpose of this game is to divert the public’s attention from the presidential election and encourage a culture of laziness.

The “Livelihood” of Ordinary People in Economic Hardship

Due to Western sanctions, Iran has long been facing problems such as high inflation, currency depreciation, reduced job opportunities, and worsening poverty. According to data released by the World Bank, about 9.5 million Iranians fell into poverty in the first decade of the 21st century. Faced with macroeconomic challenges, many Iranians are seeking alternative ways to secure their financial management and are gradually adopting a positive attitude towards cryptocurrencies, a new emerging risk asset.

The unprecedented popularity of Hamster Kombat in Iran reminds people of the glorious days when Axie Infinity was in Southeast Asia. In the wave of unemployment in the Philippines, Axie Infinity players can earn an average monthly income of over $300 through the game, which is higher than the local average salary. Among these players are not only those living in slums.

Iranian official media “JameJam” criticized the popular phenomenon of Hamster Kombat, saying, “If a society does not work hard, make money, but instead plays this kind of game, seeks shortcuts and windfalls, then this society will gradually lose the culture of hard work and entrepreneurship.”

However, for the low-income people who have been in a long-term economic downturn, perhaps they don’t care too much after working hard and becoming numb, and they have nothing to do with all kinds of worries and concerns. Even after participating in months of Hamster Kombat, in the end, they only witnessed a mirage.