After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has since experienced a notable decrease in concurrent players. This article delves into the game's popularity and the reasons behind 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, is a seemingly simple clicker game that quickly gained immense popularity, reaching an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, the game has not been able to replicate those numbers since. According to SteamDB, there has been a significant decline in player numbers from November 2024 to the present.
For those new to the game, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that defies traditional gaming norms. Launched in April 2024, it boasts minimalistic gameplay centered around clicking a banana image repeatedly. Its appeal, however, stems from the financial incentives it offers. Players can earn virtual banana items, which can be sold on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items, like the "Special Golden Banana," fetching high prices, such as $1,378.58.
The game's meteoric rise can be attributed to several factors. Initially, the allure of earning Steam Wallet funds with minimal effort attracted a large player base. 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 player counts.
"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 to get rarer drops or at least drops in bulk."
The developers implemented bot prevention measures in May 2024, but it remains unclear if the current 100,000+ players are genuine. Despite these efforts, the game's concurrent player count experienced a sharp decline post-peak. By July 2024, the average number of players had dropped to 549,091, and this downward trend continued, with November 2024 seeing a significant drop from 400,000 to just above 100,000. Although the game briefly doubled its player count at the start of 2025, it has not recovered from this decline.
Currently, Banana 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 reason for this sudden dip remains unclear, and it's challenging to ascertain if bots were involved. The general trend of decreasing player counts likely reflects the waning novelty of the game.
The developers have been actively updating the game, introducing 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 the game regain its peak without bot assistance remains to be seen.
