Crypto games after Notcoin: What killed tap-to-earn games and which projects will disrupt the industry

Tap-to-Earn Games After Notcoin: What Killed the Clickers and Which Projects Could Shake Up the Industry

Tap-to-earn games were one of the biggest hypes of 2024. However, it now seems that everyone has forgotten about them. Let’s explore what led to the downfall of clicker games and what the future holds for the Tap-to-Earn sector.

Tap-to-earn games are blockchain-based games built around the Tap-to-Earn model—"tap and earn." Their popularity peaked in 2024. Projects like Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, and others attracted tens of millions of users, but the hype didn’t last long.

By the end of last year, interest in tap-to-earn games had significantly declined. For instance, Hamster Kombat’s monthly user base dropped from 300 million to 4.8 million players.

Notcoin faced a similar situation. Its creators recently declared the death of the Tap-to-Earn format. At the time of writing, the project’s mini-app has only 665,000 monthly users.

Cointelegraph gathered expert opinions on the current state of the segment, the reasons behind the fading hype, and the future of Tap-to-Earn.

Why Tap-to-Earn Games Failed

The main issue with tap-to-earn games lies in their core design. While they’re technically games, in reality, they function more like simulations of monotonous labor. They lack strategy, storylines, and even basic gameplay progression. Players are expected to tap the screen endlessly and hope for rewards. Eventually, this becomes boring.

Konstantin Sinev, Marketing Manager at Further Ventures, compared the concept of clicker games to a fitness routine. He also highlighted two key reasons why tap-to-earn games managed to attract large audiences:

• Aggressive marketing, fueled by the hype surrounding memecoins;

• The promise of real earnings.

“Memes got boring, and the actual rewards distributed by the early tap-to-earn games disappointed users, resulting in a wave of negativity,” he added.

The developers of the rising P2E game dEmpire of Vampire also stated that tap-to-earn games on Telegram “have reached the end of their era.”

According to them, mini-apps now have only two options:

• Transform into truly useful products, like banking apps or marketplaces;

• Lose relevance and user interest entirely.

“There’s no point in explaining exactly why this happened—everyone understands that tap-to-earn games were never real products and had no chance of long-term survival,” the game’s team noted.

This opinion is echoed by players. The analytics platform Chainplay conducted a survey among tap-to-earn users: over half of them stopped playing due to repetitive tasks and also expressed concerns about scams and security issues.

Chainplay noted that clicker games fail to retain users after airdrops: 50% of respondents said their activity in the game dropped after receiving rewards.

Player engagement decreases even when developers continue developing the ecosystem after token generation. For example, the Hamster Kombat team recently announced the launch of a gaming platform and their own Layer-2 network. This didn’t help: the monthly active user count currently stands at just 4.8 million—down from a peak of 300 million.

According to CoinMarketCap, the HMSTR token has lost 75% of its value since launch. Notcoin’s NOT token has dropped by 73%.

What’s Next for Tap-to-Earn and Web3 Gaming

Tap-to-earn games are just a small niche within the broader Play-to-Earn (P2E) sector. According to Konstantin Sinev, the death of clicker games will not impact the P2E segment as a whole.

“We saw good examples of early marketing and project launches through tap-to-earn games, but none of them evolved beyond that. Tap-to-earn had no long-term prospects—they were vague from the start. Now, players are left with examples of almost zero returns for their time spent. Tap-to-earn games have no real influence on the future of Web3 gaming, except perhaps by turning mainstream users away from the core Play-to-Earn concept,” he said.

In short, tap-to-earn is a dead-end branch of P2E. Sinev believes that the future belongs to projects where blockchain enhances the gameplay, not replaces it.

“Web3 games are part of the broader context of the global economy’s evolution—particularly the concept of universal basic income (UBI). They are two sides of the same coin: redistributing value in the digital economy. UBI provides the foundation; Play-to-Earn offers opportunities for self-expression in new formats,” he emphasized.

Alex MVP shared a similar view. He noted that the tap-to-earn hype attracted greed from both sides: developers looking to cash in quickly and players farming accounts in hopes of easy money.

“But now we’ve entered an era of creation. Projects that survive will focus on real gameplay value, not speculation.”

He also pointed out that the Web3 gaming sector is currently in crisis. Hundreds of studios have shut down, including those with millions in funding: Jungle ($6M), Nyan Heroes ($13M), Blast Royale ($5M), Metalcore ($20M), and others. The reasons include the crypto market cycle, declining interest in Web3 games, and the end of the tap-to-earn era—factors that combined to bankrupt many studios.

Sinev stressed that mass adoption of Web3 games will take time. The biggest challenge is that investor expectations often don’t match the real development timeline for high-quality games.

“To develop a playable product with tokenization ‘under the hood,’ you need at least 2–3 years and a fully staffed team led by experienced managers from the traditional game development industry. I followed several projects that I thought could revive GameFi, but even games like Gunzilla or Shrapnel have shown only moderate results in terms of players and investor interest.”

Alex MVP pointed to another issue: a mismatch in expectations between Web2 and Web3 users. Web2 gamers seek fun and emotion, while Web3 gamers want profit. This imbalance contributes to the crisis—but it’s not a death sentence.

“Web3 gaming is in crisis, but not dead. It’s just a phase. I believe in its future—maybe the name will change, but the essence will remain: a game economy where players earn.”

Tokenization as an Inevitable Trend

Web3 researcher Vladimir Menaskop believes that in the future, successful projects will emerge that effectively merge gaming and crypto. Tokenization will play a key role and eventually spread to all sectors of the economy.

“It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about ores or games. Today, corporations resist this because it disrupts financial flows and user traffic. In the mid to late 1990s, few believed e-commerce could compete with offline retail. But by the 2020s, online giants were dominating.”

Sinev added that attention is now shifting to areas like the tokenization of real-world assets.

“It’s a great time for developers and entrepreneurs to learn from past mistakes and start building gaming products that prove Play-to-Earn is viable.”

According to Menaskop, we may see the first truly successful P2E projects by 2026–2027. However, the full integration of gaming and crypto will take longer—after all, “crypto is only 15 years old.”

The developers of dEmpire of Vampire, however, are less optimistic. In their view, we shouldn’t expect a flood of full-fledged Web3 projects anytime soon.

“Crypto projects are usually not focused on long-term product development but on raising funds and generating hype. In many cases, the product isn’t even started. That’s why the sector has a poor reputation among users—many past projects have ruined it,” they concluded.