"Banana Game Sees Sharp Decline in Steam Player Count"

After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has experienced a notable decrease in concurrent players. This article delves into the game's popularity and the reasons behind its 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 phenomenon. This seemingly simple clicker game reached an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, the game has not been able to replicate those numbers since. According to SteamDB, there has been a significant decline in player numbers from November 2024 to the present.

For those new to Banana, it's a free-to-play clicker game that defies traditional gaming norms. Launched in April 2024, the game is minimalistic, with gameplay centered around clicking a banana image repeatedly. Its appeal, however, lies in the potential financial rewards. Players can acquire virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items reaching high prices. A "Special Golden Banana" once sold for $1,378.58.

The game's meteoric rise can be attributed to several factors. The 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 popularity also drew in automated bots designed to farm valuable drops, artificially inflating player counts.

"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, but it remains unclear if the game's 100,000+ players are genuine. Post-peak, the concurrent player count experienced a sharp decline. By July 2024, the average number of players had dropped to 549,091. This downward trend continued, with November 2024 seeing a significant drop from 400,000 to just above 100,000. Despite a brief increase at the start of 2025, the game has not recovered from this decline.

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 cause of this sudden dip is unclear, and it's difficult to ascertain if bots were involved. The general trend of decreasing player counts is likely due to the waning novelty of the game.

The developers have been actively updating the game, adding 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 Banana regain its peak popularity without the aid of bots remains to be seen.