After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has experienced a notable decline in concurrent players. Let's dive deeper into the game's popularity and the factors contributing to this downward trend.
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 simple clicker game. It reached an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024 but has struggled to regain those numbers. According to SteamDB, the game saw a significant decline from November 2024 to the present.
For those unfamiliar, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that defies conventional gaming norms. Its minimalistic gameplay involves clicking a banana image repeatedly. However, its true appeal lies in the potential financial incentives. Players can acquire virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items, like a "Special Golden Banana," fetching prices as high as $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 attracted a significant number of players. Team developer Hery described the game as a "legal 'Infinite money glitch'" in a June 2024 interview with Polygon. However, this surge also attracted automated bots designed to farm valuable drops, artificially inflating the 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. Despite these efforts, the authenticity of the game's over 100,000 players remains uncertain. Post-peak, the concurrent player count experienced a sharp decline. By July 2024, the average number of players dropped to 549,091, with the downward trend continuing into November 2024, where the count fell from 400,000 to just above 100,000. Although the game saw a temporary increase at the start of 2025, it has not rebounded to its former glory.
Banana currently holds strong 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, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The cause of this sudden dip remains unclear, and it's challenging to determine if bots were involved. The general trend of decreasing player counts likely stems from the game's initial novelty wearing off.
The developers have been proactive, regularly updating the game with trading cards, event drops, and quality-of-life improvements. 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 peak without bot assistance remains to be seen.
