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 as a seemingly simple clicker game. It skyrocketed to fame, achieving an all-time peak of 917,272 concurrent players in June 2024. However, the game has struggled to maintain those heights, with a significant decline noted from November 2024 onward.

Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that challenges traditional gaming norms. Its gameplay is minimalistic, where players click on a banana image repeatedly. The real allure, though, lies in the financial incentives it offers. Players can earn virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items fetching high prices. For example, a "Special Golden Banana" once sold for an astonishing $1,378.58.

The game's rapid rise to popularity was driven by the promise of earning Steam Wallet funds with minimal effort. Developer Hery described it as a "legal 'Infinite money glitch'" in a June 2024 Polygon interview. This attraction brought in a massive player base, but it also led to an influx of automated bots farming valuable drops, artificially inflating the player count.

Hery noted the issue to Polygon, stating, "Unfortunately, we are currently facing some problems around botting, since the game takes basically 1% to no resources of your PC. 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 introduced bot prevention measures in May 2024. However, the authenticity of the game's current 100,000+ players remains uncertain. Post-peak, the concurrent player count saw a sharp decline. By July 2024, the average number of players had dropped to 549,091, and this downward trend persisted into subsequent months. November 2024 saw a dramatic fall from 400,000 to just over 100,000 players. Despite a brief surge at the start of 2025, the game has not recovered its former glory.

Currently, Banana maintains a solid base of 112,966 concurrent players and ranks 7th on Steam's Most Played Games list. However, a sudden drop to around 50,000 players was observed on March 16th, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The cause of this dip is unclear, and it's challenging to ascertain the involvement of bots. The overall trend of declining player counts suggests that the initial novelty of the game may be waning.

The developers have been proactive in updating the game, introducing trading cards, event drops, and quality-of-life improvements. They've also engaged the community by incorporating user-generated banana art through the Steam Workshop, with creators receiving a share of sales. Whether these efforts will help Banana regain its peak popularity without bot assistance remains to be seen.