After reaching its peak in June 2024, the game Banana on Steam has experienced a noticeable decrease in concurrent players. This article delves into the factors behind its initial surge in popularity and subsequent decline.

Banana Game Steam Charts Show Massive Decline

It’s a Clicker Game About Bananas…

Launched on April 23, 2024, Banana on Steam is a free-to-play clicker game that quickly rose to prominence, reaching an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, the game has not been able to replicate these numbers since. According to SteamDB, there has been a significant decline from November 2024 to the present day.

Banana's gameplay is deceptively simple: players click on a banana image repeatedly. Its appeal, however, lies in the potential for financial gain. Players can acquire and sell virtual banana items on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items, like the "Special Golden Banana," fetching high prices, once sold for $1,378.58.

The game's meteoric rise can be attributed to the allure of earning Steam Wallet funds with minimal effort. Developer Hery described it as a "legal 'Infinite money glitch'" in a June 2024 interview with Polygon. This surge, however, also attracted 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 to get Rarer drops or at least drops in bulk."

In response, the developers implemented bot prevention measures in May 2024. Despite these efforts, the authenticity of the game's 100,000+ players remains uncertain. Post-peak, the game's concurrent player count saw a sharp decline. By July 2024, the average number of players had dropped to 549,091, and this downward trend continued, with November 2024 seeing a drop from 400,000 to just above 100,000. Although there was a momentary doubling of player count at the start of 2025, the game has not rebounded to its former glory.

Currently, Banana holds steady 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 ascertain the involvement of bots. The overall trend of decreasing player counts suggests the game's initial novelty is waning.

The developers have been proactive with updates, introducing 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 bot assistance remains to be seen.