A game on Steam called Banana has suddenly shot up in fame on Steam, drawing in over 815,679 players. At the time of writing, it was the second most concurrently played game on the platform, only bested by Counter-Strike 2.
It may seem odd that such a simple, idle game of a banana on a green screen is attracting so many players ahead of GTA 5, PUBG, Dota 2, and Destiny 2. However, the secret behind everyone playing the Banana game has nothing to do with increased awareness of healthy nutrition. They are doing it with the prospect of making money.
“Banana is a clicker Game, in which you click a Banana!” read the official game blurb on Steam. “In Banana, you click the Banana to gain even more Banans! Every 3 and 18 hours, you get dropped a banana. Each banana is also made by the community in discord.”
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It turned out that the Banana that is dropped periodically into player inventory has a random skin. The rarity of some skins has made them a priceless piece of art. Players with rare Banana skins are putting them up for sale on Steam’s marketplace. It was reported that one Banana with golden shiny skin was sold for over $1,000.
Pony developed Banana in collaboration with Sky (who also published the game) and AestheticSpartan. The game was created with the Unity engine. At the time of writing, it had very positive reviews from over 15,000 reviewers.
Although the game was released on April 23, 2024, it only started trending last weekend when players discovered the prospects of making money through the game.
Those interested in hopping on the Banana clicking frenzy will be interested to know that the free-to-play game has minimal system recommendation; 1.0 GHz of processor, 256 MB RAM, and 150 MB storage. Basically, any PC can handle the game, which also makes it easy for genuine players to abuse it.
The problems with Banana
The majority of the skins available in the Banana game are not worth much, but some skins can earn players a fortune. For example, a diamond banana skin may be sold anywhere from $70 to $165 while a pickles-shaped banana is worth around $15. However, the summer banana skin with a hat and dress is worth less than a dollar.
Although SteamDB records show that nearly a million people are playing Banana, the number is not an accurate representation of the real players tapping away their time on an idle screen.
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One of the developers Hery told Polygon that only a fraction of the players are real. The rest are bots created by players to cheat the system. The developers are working with Valve to figure out a way to stop the bots.
“Unfortunately, we are currently facing some problems around botting, since the game takes basically 1% to no resources of your PC, people are abusing up to 1000 alternative accounts in order to get Rarer drops or at least drops in bulk,” said Hery over Discord chat.
Some of the rare banana skins that often drop into the inventory of players have seen their values shoot up over a few weeks. For example, one Crypticnana skin which only has 25 in existence was sold for $378.92 on May 31 but on June 11, it was sold for $514. At the time of writing, 5 of Crypticnana were listed on the Steam store starting at $1,142.78 and rising up to $1,401.07.
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“I do believe that the reason why it mostly caught on is because it’s a legal ‘Infinite money glitch,’” Hery said. “Users make money out of a free game while selling free virtual items.”
While at the moment the rare drops have no impact on the game, Hery said that may change in the future with updates. Hery also said it may get a minigame as well as a way to exchange multiple bananas for another.
