After peaking in June 2024, Banana on Steam has seen a significant drop in concurrent players. Let's explore the reasons behind its initial popularity and subsequent decline.

Banana Game Steam Charts Reveal a Dramatic Fall

A Clicker Game About… Bananas

For the uninitiated, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game with minimalist gameplay—click a banana, repeat. Its appeal wasn't the gameplay itself, but the potential to earn real money. Players could acquire and sell virtual banana items on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items fetching surprisingly high prices—a "Special Golden Banana" even sold for $1,378.58.

The game's rapid rise can be attributed to the promise of easy Steam Wallet funds. As Hery, a developer, told Polygon in June 2024, it was essentially a "legal ‘Infinite money glitch.’" This attracted a significant number of players, but also attracted bots designed to exploit the system, artificially inflating player counts.

Hery explained to Polygon, "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 1,000 alternative accounts in order to get rarer drops or at least drops in bulk."

Following the implementation of anti-bot measures in May 2024, the authenticity of the remaining 100,000+ players remains uncertain. Regardless, a sharp decline followed the peak. By July 2024, the average player count had fallen to 549,091. This trend continued, with November 2024 seeing a massive drop from around 400,000 to just over 100,000. While a temporary surge occurred at the start of 2025, the game hasn't recovered to its previous heights.

Currently boasting 112,966 concurrent players (and a respectable 7th place on Steam's Most Played Games list), Banana experienced a sudden dip to around 50,000 players on March 16th, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The cause of this sudden drop remains unclear, but the overall downward trend is likely due to the game's initial novelty wearing off.

The developers have consistently updated the game, adding trading cards, event drops, and quality-of-life improvements. They’ve also engaged the community through the Steam Workshop, allowing user-generated banana art and sharing revenue with creators. Whether these efforts will be enough to revive the game's popularity without the help of bots remains to be seen.