After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has experienced a noticeable decline in concurrent players. This article delves into the reasons behind its initial surge in popularity and the subsequent drop in player numbers.
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 not matched those numbers since. According to SteamDB, there has been a significant decline from November 2024 to the present day.
For those unfamiliar, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that breaks conventional gaming norms. Launched in April 2024, the game is minimalistic, with gameplay centered around clicking a banana image repeatedly. Its appeal, however, lies in the potential financial incentives. Players can acquire virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with rare items fetching significant amounts. For example, a "Special Golden Banana" was 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 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 in popularity also drew in 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."
The developers implemented bot prevention measures in May 2024, and it remains unclear whether the current 100,000+ players are genuine. However, 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. This downward trend continued, with November 2024 seeing a significant drop from 400,000 to just above 100,000. Despite a temporary increase at the start of 2025, the game has not rebounded to its former heights.
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 determine if bots were involved. The general trend of decreasing player counts is likely due to the game's initial novelty wearing off.
The developers have been actively updating the game, introducing trading cards, event drops, and quality-of-life improvements. They have 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 the aid of bots remains uncertain.
