Businessman Eduard Gurinovich registered the Hamster Kombat trademark with Rospatent

“We have purchased the rights to the brand and will be responsible for working with the local community. <...> “We will also be responsible for advertising sales for the Russian region,” Gurinovich wrote on his Telegram channel.

The businessman explained the registration of the trademark with Rospatent as “a growing wave of fraudsters around the world.” He also said that Russian users have been victims of phishing attacks more than once.

Rospatent granted registration of the trademark on July 5.

An hour after the post was published, Gurinovich said he was immediately bombarded with questions about when the in-game currency could be exchanged for cryptocurrency. The businessman promised to block accounts with such messages.

The creators of Hamster Kombat have not been officially named, but last month the Telegram channel “Toad and Viper” associated the app with Eduard Gurinovich, Alexander Zelenshchikov and Alexander Pasechnik.

Thus, the authors of the investigation found out that two months before the launch of Hamster Kombat, the domain hamsterkombat.com was registered. The email address declared during registration belongs to the Cypriot Arenum ltd. Gurinovich, Zelenshchikov and Pasechnik are shareholders of this company.

Eduard Gurinovich is the co-founder of the CarPrice platform and also headed the CarMoney company. He also invested in his own project Expload, which provides a blockchain platform for the development and distribution of decentralized games.

Hamster Kombat is a mobile game within Telegram. Users click on the image of a hamster, thanks to which they get virtual in-game currency. It was stated that after the game is launched on the cryptocurrency exchange, this money will be converted into real cryptocurrency.

Launched in March 2024, the game had already attracted 60 million players by May, with 24 million people “touching” the hamster every day.

Against the backdrop of the growing popularity of Hamster Kombat, Ozon and Wildberries have seen an increase in sales of percussion massagers. With their help = users click on the virtual hamster faster and more efficiently.

In July, the hype about the game sparked interest in the State Duma. Chairman of the Duma’s Financial Market Committee Anatoly Aksakov called for a ban on Hamster Kombat.