After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has since experienced a noticeable decrease in concurrent players. Let's delve into the journey of its popularity and the factors contributing to its player decline.
Banana Game Steam Charts Show Massive Decline
It’s a Clicker Game About Bananas…
Banana on Steam, launched on April 23, 2024, quickly rose to fame as a seemingly simplistic clicker game. It hit an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024, but has yet to see those numbers again. According to SteamDB, there was a significant decline from November 2024 up to the present day.
For those unfamiliar, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that breaks traditional gaming norms. Its gameplay is minimalistic, centered around players clicking a banana image repeatedly. The game's allure, however, stems not from its gameplay but from the potential financial incentives. Players can acquire virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, where some rare items have fetched substantial sums. For example, a "Special Golden Banana" once sold for $1,378.58.
The meteoric rise of Banana can be attributed to several key factors. Initially, the promise of earning Steam Wallet funds through minimal effort attracted a vast number of players. Team developer Hery even described the game as a "legal ‘Infinite money glitch,’" in a June 2024 interview with Polygon. However, this surge in popularity also drew in automated bots designed to farm 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 introduced bot prevention measures in May 2024. It's currently unknown if its 100,000+ players are genuine. Nonetheless, the game’s concurrent player count experienced a sharp decline after its peak. By July 2024, the average number of players had dropped to 549,091. This downward trend persisted, with November 2024 seeing a significant 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 recover from this decline.
Banana currently holds a strong position with 112,966 concurrent players and ranks 7th on Steam's Most Played Games list. However, a significant drop to around 50,000 players was observed on March 16th, 2025, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The reason for this sudden dip remains unclear, and it's difficult to ascertain if bots were involved. Nonetheless, the general trend of decreasing player counts is likely due to the waning of the game's initial novelty.
The developers have been proactive, regularly updating the game with trading cards, event drops, and quality-of-life enhancements. They've also engaged the community by allowing user-generated banana art through the Steam Workshop, with creators earning a percentage of sales. While these efforts are commendable, it remains uncertain whether they will help Banana regain its zenith without the assistance of bots.
