Hamster Kombat

What Hamster Kombat is teaching us about game marketing | The DeanBeat

Game marketing is changing, thanks to Hamster Kombat, a tapping mini-game on Telegram that has been downloaded more than 300 million times since March. It took only 73 days for Hamster Kombat to reach its first 100 million users.

Traditional marketing tactics are losing their power when it comes to attracting the attention of target audiences, said Tavia Wong, chief marketing officer at Credbull, a small private credit company in Asia with a dozen employees. The age of the viral game is back, at least on one platform. And many are starting to copy the formula like PiP World, Bondex, Gamee and Liithos.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.