After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has since experienced a decrease in concurrent players. Let's delve into the reasons behind its fluctuating popularity and player decline.
Banana Game Steam Charts Show Massive Decline
It’s a Clicker Game About Bananas…
Launched on April 23, 2024, Banana on Steam took the gaming world by storm. This seemingly simple clicker game skyrocketed to prominence, achieving an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, the game has yet to reach those numbers again, with a significant decline observed from November 2024 up to the present day according to SteamDB.
For those unfamiliar, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that defies traditional gaming conventions. Its gameplay is minimalistic, centered around clicking a banana image repeatedly. Yet, its appeal lies not in the gameplay but in the potential financial incentives. Players can acquire virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items, like the "Special Golden Banana," fetching substantial sums, once sold for $1,378.58.
The game’s meteoric rise can be attributed to several factors. Initially, the allure of earning Steam Wallet funds through minimal effort drew in a significant number of players. Team developer Hery even described the game as a "legal ‘Infinite money glitch,’" in an interview with Polygon in June 2024. However, this surge in popularity also attracted automated bots designed to farm these valuable drops, artificially inflating the game’s player count.
"Unfortunately, we are currently facing some problems around botting, since the game takes basically 1% to no resources of your PC," Hery told Polygon. "People are abusing up to 1,000 alternative accounts in order to get Rarer drops or at least drops in bulk."
In response, the developers implemented bot prevention measures in May 2024. While it remains unclear if the game's 100,000+ players are genuine, the concurrent player count experienced a sharp decline post-peak. By July 2024, the average number of players had decreased to 549,091 players. This downward trend continued in the subsequent months, with November 2024 witnessing a huge drop from 400,000 to just above 100,000. Despite a momentary doubling of its player count at the start of 2025, the game has yet to rebound from this decline.
Banana currently holds strong with 112,966 concurrent players and even ranks 7th on Steam's Most Played Games list. However, a significant drop to around 50,000 players was observed on March 16th, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The reason for this sudden dip is unclear, and it's difficult to determine if bots were involved. Regardless, the general trend of decreasing player counts is likely due to the game's initial novelty waning.
The developers have been proactive in updating the game, introducing trading cards, event drops, and quality-of-life updates. They've also engaged the community by allowing user-generated banana art through the Steam Workshop, with creators earning a percentage of sales. Whether these efforts will help Banana regain its zenith without the assistance of bots remains uncertain.
