Banana Game Sees Sharp Decline in Steam Players

After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has experienced a notable decline in concurrent players. This article delves into the game's rise to fame and its subsequent drop in popularity.

Banana Game Steam Charts Show Massive Decline

It’s a Clicker Game About Bananas…

Banana on Steam, launched on April 23, 2024, quickly became a sensation. This seemingly simple clicker game achieved an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, it has not been able to replicate these numbers since. Data from SteamDB indicates a significant decline in player counts from November 2024 to the present.

For those new to the game, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that challenges traditional gaming norms. Despite its minimalistic approach—where players simply click on a banana image repeatedly—its appeal 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 like the "Special Golden Banana" fetching high prices, once sold for $1,378.58.

The game's rapid rise can be attributed to several key factors. The initial allure of earning Steam Wallet funds with minimal effort attracted a large player base. Developer Hery described the game as a "legal 'Infinite money glitch'" in a June 2024 interview with Polygon. However, this surge in popularity also led to an influx of automated bots farming valuable drops, artificially inflating player numbers.

"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."

To combat this, the developers introduced bot prevention measures in May 2024. Despite these efforts, it remains uncertain whether the game's current 100,000+ players are genuine. Post-peak, the game saw a sharp decline in concurrent players, dropping to an average of 549,091 by July 2024. This downward trend persisted, with November 2024 witnessing a significant drop from 400,000 to just above 100,000. Although the player count momentarily doubled at the start of 2025, it has not recovered from the decline.

Currently, Banana holds steady with 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 remains unclear, and it's challenging to ascertain the role of bots. The general trend of decreasing player counts suggests that the game's initial novelty may be waning.

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 integrating 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 popularity without bot assistance remains to be seen.