In most cases, one has to pay for experience. Sometimes, it costs money, and sometimes it costs time. Users of the popular Hamster Kombat game have recently found what it is like to trade their time for an invaluable experience.

The developers evaluated players’ activity and delivered the highly anticipated airdrop, providing players with an average of 1,000-4,000 HMSTR.

Some players have been calculating their potential profits ahead of the airdrop, dreaming of big money. However, the coin’s exchange listing revealed the bitter truth. To sell their coins for just $0.01, users had about 10 minutes after the beginning of trading. After this short period, HMSTR has started to drop.

Most users have been watching their HMSTR drop in price tick after tick. Ultimately, the coin fell below $0.005. Having sold at such a price, the average player would have received $5-$20. Surely, that’s better than nothing, but most players were disappointed. Why did this happen?

The key idea behind Hamster Kombat and similar games is to launch the in-game coin and list it on major exchanges. Developers keep some coins for themselves, hoping that active trading on exchanges would support the price of such coins and provide them with an opportunity to reap profits.

Hamster Kombat was interested in maximizing the number of users rather than players’ profits. A coin of the game that has 200+ million players cannot cost much as it would lead to huge market capitalization and require a solid number of major investors to support the initial listing.

For example, the current market cap of HMSTR at $0.0045 per coin is almost $300 million. The fully diluted market cap at such a price is roughly $450 million.

Every half a cent of HMSTR price is worth $500 million. To “move” the coin, HMSTR must attract significant investments. Meanwhile, players who have just received their HMSTR are selling the coin to get some money out of the game.

Of course, HMSTR developers will try to attract new players to support the value of the coin. However, it remains to be seen whether they will be able to maintain user activity, as many players were disappointed by the airdrop.

From a big-picture point of view, the new generation of players has just learned there’s no free lunch. Many people have spent their valuable time achieving meager results. There’s simply no reason why anyone would give you a lot of money for tapping the screen.

The main goal of any developer is to cash out during the maximum popularity of the game. The long-term value of the coin is not their main goal, although developers will support the project as long as it makes money.

From the investment point of view, crypto investors should always stay focused on the coin's fundamentals and long-term utility, avoiding projects with dubious tokenomics. Overall, Hamster Kombat’s listing revealed that a tapping game with solid fundamentals is yet to be developed.