How Telegram Game ‘Hamster Kombat’ Got 300 Million Users—and the Ire of Iran’s Military

The founders reveal their third inspiration, and this one’s less obvious: TikTok.

“First, there was Musical.ly, and it almost died,” say the founders, referring to the original incarnation of TikTok. Then ByteDance (which acquired Musical.ly) found ways to incentivize sharing. “People underestimate the effect of these tiny mechanisms,” say the creators. “Sometimes, they can turn the tide.”

Tiny mechanisms are everywhere in Hamster Kombat. You earn coins for inviting friends to the game, watching YouTube videos, subscribing to the Telegram channel, and so on. “We knew that the only way for us to grow was by making everything inside the game viral,” claim the founders. “We simply didn’t have $50 million for marketing.”

Going viral doesn’t happen by accident. Every day, the founders obsessively follow real-world events and…