Yeah, the developers probably did not want to create just a Ponzi scheme. But look at the articles that are written every day with #drugwars tag. The overwhelming majority talks about profit and ROI.

In my opinion, it is OK to play the game for fun. Fun is subjective and if you want to, invest as much time and money as you like. But if you want to use it as an investment opportunity, there is a significant pattern that is common for Ponzis as it is for DrugWars - early investors are being paid by investments of those who came after them. Many people prooved that the whole system is not sustainable and it requires heavy changes. Currently, it favors those who came early and those who invested less money (or did spread bigger investment into many accounts). If you want to have the same profit for the same amount of produced drugs, bigger and bigger investments will be needed (also typical for Ponzis) → so rewards will be getting smaller making the potential players less motivated to join. So in some time, new players can get so little percentage per day that the game would not have the investment potential so only those who like the game would remain.

I think @cryptoeater explains it better in his article https://steemit.com/drugwars/@cryptoeater/analysis-on-drug-wars-economy-response-from-hightouch. Although he is a fan of this new game, he agrees that the system is unsustainable if it is based only on investments of players.

I hope that the developers will solve this problem. Unfortunately, now majority of the players are in the game because of the profit potential, not for the fun.

And I have to add, that it is not good to centralize about 100k SP to few persons. The risk of scam is there and no words can exclude it. Although this is only speculation (nobody can have a proof that it is a scam, when the exit scam has not yet been done), the risk is evident. But their 20% share is probably enough for them.