After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has experienced a notable decline in concurrent players. Dive deeper to understand its popularity and the reasons behind the player drop-off.
Banana Game Steam Charts Show Massive Decline
It’s a Clicker Game About Bananas…
Banana, launched on Steam on April 23, 2024, quickly became a sensation with its unique clicker game mechanics. It soared to an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024, but since then, the numbers have not been able to reclaim those heights. According to SteamDB, there has been a significant decline from November 2024 to the present.For those new to the game, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that challenges traditional gaming norms. It's incredibly minimalistic, with gameplay centered around clicking a banana image repeatedly. However, the game's appeal lies not in its simplicity but in the potential for financial gain. Players can obtain virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, where some rare items have fetched high prices, such as a "Special Golden Banana" that sold for $1,378.58.
The game's rapid ascent can be attributed to several key factors. The promise of earning Steam Wallet funds with minimal effort initially attracted a large player base. In an interview with Polygon in June 2024, team developer Hery described the game as a "legal ‘Infinite money glitch.'" This surge in popularity also drew in automated bots aiming 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 in order to get Rarer drops or at least drops in bulk."
In response, the developers introduced bot prevention measures in May 2024. While it's unclear how many of the 100,000+ players are genuine, the game's concurrent player count saw a sharp decline following its peak. By July 2024, the average number of players had dropped to 549,091, with the downward trend continuing into November 2024, where numbers fell from 400,000 to just above 100,000. Despite a brief increase at the start of 2025, the game has struggled to recover.
Currently, Banana maintains a solid player base 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, 2025, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The cause of this sudden dip remains unclear, and it's challenging to determine the involvement of bots. The general trend of declining player counts suggests that the initial novelty of the game may be waning.
The developers have been proactive, 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 share of sales. Despite these efforts, it remains uncertain whether Banana can regain its former glory without the aid of bots.
