decrypt.co
Hamster Kombat fans are still waiting for the hit Telegram game’s promised second season following the September token drop, but a release window given by the developers has come and gone—and the HMSTR token keeps sinking in the meantime.
HSMTR, minted on The Open Network (TON), hit a new all-time low price of $0.0025 on Friday, per data from CoinMarketCap. It’s now down 11% over the past week at a current price of $0.0026, rebounding slightly from the Friday low.
The price of the Hamster Kombat token has fallen sharply since the September 26 launch and airdrop, and is about 74% down from the peak price as of this writing. That dip closely resembles those of other top Telegram game tokens, with Catizen (CATI) down 71% since its own peak and Notcoin (NOT) down 78% since hitting a nearly $3 billion market cap in June.
Hamster Kombat’s airdrop was massively anticipated after the Telegram tap-to-earn game attracted more than 300 million players earlier this year. Approximately 129 million players were ultimately eligible to claim HMSTR tokens, based on their gameplay.
When the token dropped, however, many players complained about the size of their reward, with some taking to social media to say they’d received $10 or less worth of the token, and comparing the airdrop to “dust.”
Hamster Kombat will continue on after the token launch, with a second airdrop planned for summer 2025 following a second full season of gameplay. The upcoming overhaul will let players take the reins of a hamster-run game development studio, as they design and deploy games—while still containing tap-to-earn gameplay.
The anonymous development team recently shared a teaser video showing a first glimpse of the overhaul, but an “end of October” launch estimate given to Decrypt last month has since come and gone with no Season 2 launch—and no updated timeframe for the refresh.
It’s not only the token price that is suffering, either. The amount of monthly active users for Hamster Kombat has plummeted of late, falling more and more each day. According to Telegram’s own data, fewer than 44 million users have played the mini app over the last month—down from over 100 million as of late September.