The Hoosier Lottery has halted sales of its $5 SPACE INVADERS Cash Invasion scratch-off after the game launched June 2 with a technical issue that turned some apparent winners into immediate disputes. For players who thought they had hit, the pause landed fast and left prizes in limbo.

Mike Fields bought four of the scratch-off tickets in Indianapolis and said one appeared to show a $100,000 prize. He drove to Hoosier Lottery headquarters in downtown Indianapolis to claim it, only to learn the ticket was later worth $20 instead.

Fields said officials told him the newly released game had suffered a technical issue and that he would not be paid that day. Instead, he said, he was told he would be informed by mail within 30 days. The lottery said players with a problem on a purchased ticket should send in a protest form along with the scratcher.

The game itself is built around the classic Space Invaders video game, using symbol-matching play to award cash prizes, and one feature lets a player with a rocket ship instantly win the accompanying prize. That design detail mattered because the problem did not stay abstract for long; it showed up on tickets players believed had already paid out, including another case involving Glendon Jones.

Jones said he believed he had won $2,500 on a Space Invaders scratcher and was told to come to headquarters to collect. When he arrived, he said officials told him the problem was a system glitch and a misprint, leaving him, as he put it, “pretty much out of luck on it.”

That leaves the Hoosier Lottery with an urgent credibility problem as much as a sales problem. The game is off the shelf, but the open question is how many tickets were affected and whether the disputed prizes will be paid in the end.