"Banana Game Sees Sharp Decline in Steam Player Numbers"

After reaching its peak in June 2024, the Banana game on Steam has 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…

Launched on April 23, 2024, Banana on Steam is a seemingly simplistic clicker game that quickly soared to prominence, reaching an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, the game has not been able to reclaim those numbers since. According to SteamDB, there has been a significant decline from November 2024 up to the present day.

For those unfamiliar, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that defies traditional gaming conventions. The gameplay is minimalistic, revolving around players clicking a banana image repeatedly. The game's appeal lies not in its gameplay but in the potential financial incentives. Players can acquire virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items fetching substantial sums. For instance, a "Special Golden Banana" 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 through minimal effort attracted a significant number of players. Team developer Hery even described the game as a "legal ‘Infinite money glitch,’" in an interview with Polygon in June 2024. However, this surge in popularity also attracted automated bots designed to farm these 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."

The developers implemented bot prevention measures in May 2024, and it is currently unknown if its 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 decreased to 549,091. This downward trend continued in the subsequent months, with November 2024 witnessing a huge 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 rebound from this decline.

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 reason for this sudden dip is unclear, and it's difficult to determine if bots were involved. Nonetheless, the general trend of decreasing player counts is likely due to the game's initial novelty waning.

The developers have been regularly updating the game, introducing trading cards, event drops, and quality-of-life updates. 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 zenith without the assistance of bots remains to be seen.