The widely popular Hamster Kombat in Iran has become the target of criticism, receiving unanimous negative reviews from the country's political figures and experts.

By Zen, PANews

In recent times, on the streets and alleys of Iran, at subway stations, in taxis and buses, and even in any random place, one can always see people tirelessly tapping on their phone screens. These seemingly leisurely Iranians, nine out of ten, are users of Hamster Kombat. They are mechanically clicking not for the joy of it, but to make money.

Attracting thousands of Iranian users, Hamster Kombat is a Telegram-based clicker game, where the core gameplay involves earning coins by tapping. This overly simple mechanism for a casual game would have been ignored in traditional gaming. However, in the cryptocurrency industry, after the pioneering success of "Tap to Earn" mechanism by Notcoin, a batch of similar projects quickly went online and achieved rapid growth. Hamster Kombat is one of the most prominent among them, even showing signs of surpassing its predecessor.

On June 24th, Hamster Kombat announced on the X platform that its player base had reached 200 million, with 9.8 million and 28.7 million subscribers on its X platform and YouTube accounts, respectively. From the perspective of user scale alone, this small game that was only launched in March this year is undoubtedly the most attention-grabbing phenomenon after Notcoin. However, the recent popularity of Hamster Kombat in Iran is clearly not well-received by the local government and mainstream media.

Information risk and the "empty" value of investment

The invitation mechanism of Hamster Kombat is one of the main means of achieving viral spread, which encourages every user to invite friends to join the game and receive one-time and continuous rewards. In response to this rapid spread, Hossein Delirian, a spokesperson for the Iranian National Cyberspace Center, issued a warning, stating that he had read a large number of discussions by Iranian users in many supergroups recently, and that using games for cryptocurrency mining has become a hotbed for hacker crimes. "As a spokesperson for the National Cyberspace Center, I remind those who participate in these games to pay attention to protecting their information and accounts."

Esmail Qamari, Deputy Director of Social and Crime Prevention at the Judiciary Department of Ilam Province, expressed doubts about the value of the project, pointing 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 presence of the community and external investors, they have found some value, which makes some people happy, and this has led these people to bring their friends into the market, ultimately allowing the main funds to enter the investors' pockets from outside the narrative."

This controversy has also attracted the attention of the religious community. The renowned Shiite scholar Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi described cryptocurrency as "the root of many evils" and urged people to avoid playing games involving Bitcoin, such as Hamster Kombat.

Is the enemy paralyzing the Iranian people with "milk and honey"?

In addition to expressing concerns about information and financial security issues, Dr. Alireza Chabkeru, a professor at the University of Tehran, also expressed concerns about the decline of cultural and intellectual values. "Phenomena such as artificial intelligence or games of this style have already taken away people's attention." He believes that in an era where tapping on the phone screen has become one of the main activities for many people during the day and leisure time, the dominance of cyberspace over people's thoughts and its degradation is more deeply felt. "The 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 warfare". Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Army, Habibollah Sayyari, made more intense criticisms of it. At a time when the national elections in Iran are approaching, the public lacks enthusiasm for the elections. He believes that Hamster Kombat aims to divert the public's attention from major national events and is part of a broader strategic plan. "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.

"Means of livelihood" for ordinary people in economic distress

Due to Western sanctions, Iran has long faced problems such as high inflation, currency devaluation, reduced job opportunities, and exacerbated poverty. According to data released by the World Bank, in the first decade of the 21st century, about 9.5 million Iranians fell into poverty. Faced with macroeconomic difficulties, many Iranians are looking for other ways to secure their financial management and are gradually affirming cryptocurrency as a new and risky asset.

The unprecedented popularity of Hamster Kombat in Iran inevitably brings to mind the glorious days of Axie Infinity in Southeast Asia. In the midst of mass unemployment in the Philippines, Axie Infinity players were able to earn an average of over $300 per month through the game, higher than the local average salary, and many of these players were from the lower class living in slums.

The Iranian official media "JameJam" criticized the phenomenon of Hamster Kombat's popularity, stating, "If a society does not work hard, does not strive to make money, but plays such games, seeks shortcuts and windfalls, then this society will gradually lose the culture of hard work and entrepreneurship."

However, for the lower-class people who have long been in economic decline, perhaps after working hard and becoming numb, they no longer care too much, and various worries and concerns have nothing to do with them. Even after participating in Hamster Kombat for months, in the end, it may just be a spectacle of "a mirage."

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。