What does the invasion of crypto clickers and financial pyramids have to do with it?

“Hamsters” on Telegram and the invasion of crypto clickers are among the major trends of 2024. But this is neither the first nor the last attempt to create a game where you can supposedly win real money. The portal eurogamer.net talked about how it all started and why clickers are so boring.

The craze for crypto-integrated clickers started earlier in 2024 due to the release of NotCoin: a simple app for Telegram where players need to tap a virtual coin on the screen. It is so simple that it does not cause any reaction in the information field – the game simply does not have the charm of Cookie Clicker.

However, NotCoin has attracted millions of players. Perhaps it is thanks to the promise of giving the audience tokens whose value corresponds to the coins they earn in the game. Such promotions, known in the cryptocurrency world as “airdrops,” are often held when new cryptocurrencies are launched to attract users and potentially increase the currency's price. As a result, millions of NOT tokens issued led to the rate skyrocketing to 0.02896 USD immediately after the drop. This means that players who sold all their tokens immediately after release could receive hundreds of dollars in “free” money. At the time of writing, the price has dropped significantly to $0.007754.

Clearly, NotCoin's success has spawned many imitators hoping to make a quick buck from the tap-to-win game trend. One of them is Banana, a game that topped Steam a few months ago. And in Telegram, hundreds of similar applications have appeared, designed for the crypto community living in Messenger.

Today, the leader of this market is Hamster Kombat, a clicker game in which the player plays the role of a hamster managing a cryptocurrency exchange. The game works almost exactly like NotCoin, but in addition to clicking coins (or hamsters), you also need to reinvest in the virtual exchange to earn passive income.

The authors of Hamster Kombat have not yet launched their own tokens, but an airdrop of millions of tokens is planned for September 26. According to the development team, the project's audience exceeds 300 million users . In some countries, this game is so popular that even Iran's Deputy Minister of Defense criticized Hamster Kombat – the game is said to distract people too much from the presidential election.

Tokens and earning potential serve as the driving force behind community growth. However, they are not enough to support the community in the long term. This also requires smart advertising and the ability to deliver on promises, not to mention interesting mechanics. Good gameplay and strong motivation are a perfect combination that, in theory, allows you to maintain the constant development of the community.

But it is precisely the last point that raises questions for Telegram clickers – none of them can be called interesting or attractive. Of course, some people are trying to introduce some unique mechanics. For example, in Catizen you need to combine cats of the same level to make them more valuable. But most others simply traded the coin on the screen for some other object – even a hamster, even the cartoon face of Elon Musk.

Crypto clickers are incredibly stupid apps and barely qualify as games. They can't copy even the most basic feature of Cookie Clicker – the playing time can be endless. On the contrary, many clickers constantly place obstacles in front of the player to force him to come back every few hours or spend real money.

But boring mechanics are perhaps the least sin of such games. In desperate pursuit of users, almost every such project rewards players for inviting friends, and some even require a referral program to progress. In essence, all this is reminiscent of a financial pyramid, only they offer cryptocurrency tokens as rewards.

Making profits from games is the dream of many people and now millions of people are pursuing such an opportunity in crypto clickers. However, the predatory stunts and deceptive promises that lure players in feel like a repeat of a bad idea the first time around. One day maybe someone will figure out how to make a great game where you can win real money. But the Telegram application is not like that.