I agree that if it's deceptively presented as a pure investment scheme then it qualifies as Ponzi. Here I do believe that there was a promise a game element will appear "soon", and it did appear. I see well that those who jumped in at the very beginning were mainly attracted by the pyramidal effect.
However the post is not focused narrowly on Drug Wars, I keep trying in all my post to bring a broader perspective in the discussion
When it appeared, shortly later they removed all payouts in Steem without warning and without telling people when they invested 275K Steem previously.