Banana Game Has Sudden Dip in Steam's Concurrent Player Count

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 game where players repeatedly click a banana image. Its appeal wasn't in complex gameplay, but in 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," for example, once sold for $1,378.58.

The game's rapid rise was fueled by the promise of easy Steam Wallet funds. Developer Hery even described it as a "legal ‘Infinite money glitch’" in a June 2024 interview with Polygon. This attracted an influx of automated bots designed to exploit the system, artificially inflating player numbers.

Hery acknowledged the botting problem to Polygon, stating, "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."

Bot prevention measures were implemented in May 2024, leaving the authenticity of the remaining 100,000+ players uncertain. Regardless, a sharp decline followed the peak. By July 2024, the average player count had dropped to 549,091. This downward trend continued, with a dramatic fall from over 400,000 to just above 100,000 in November 2024. 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 holding a respectable 7th place on Steam's Most Played Games list, Banana experienced a sudden drop to approximately 50,000 players on March 16th, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The cause of this dip remains unclear, but the overall downward trend likely reflects the waning novelty of the game's initial premise.

The developers have consistently updated the game, adding trading cards, event drops, and quality-of-life improvements. They've also fostered community engagement through the Steam Workshop, allowing user-generated banana art with creators earning a share of sales. Whether these efforts will revive the game to its former glory without the aid of bots remains to be seen.