After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has since experienced a decrease in concurrent players. Read on to learn more about its popularity and player decline.
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 skyrocketed to fame, achieving an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, it hasn't reached those heights again. According to SteamDB, the game saw a significant decline 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's incredibly minimalistic, with gameplay centered around clicking a banana image repeatedly. Its real allure, though, lies in the potential financial incentives. Players can acquire virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items fetching high prices. For example, a "Special Golden Banana" once sold for $1,378.58.
The game’s meteoric rise can be attributed to several factors. The promise of earning Steam Wallet funds with minimal effort initially drew in a significant number of players. In a June 2024 interview with Polygon, team developer Hery described the game as a "legal ‘Infinite money glitch.’" However, this popularity also attracted 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 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 100,000+ players are genuine. The game's concurrent player count experienced a sharp decline after its peak. By July 2024, the average number of players dropped to 549,091, and this downward trend continued, with November 2024 seeing a significant drop from 400,000 to just over 100,000. Despite a brief surge at the start of 2025, the game has not rebounded since.
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 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 wearing off.
The developers have been regularly updating the game with 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 popularity without the assistance of bots remains to be seen.
