Banana Game Sees Sharp Decline in Steam Player Numbers

After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has experienced a noticeable decrease in concurrent players. Let's delve into the reasons behind its rise to fame and the subsequent decline in its player base.

Banana Game Steam Charts Show Massive Decline

It’s a Clicker Game About Bananas…

Launched on April 23, 2024, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that quickly gained immense popularity, achieving an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, the game's player count has significantly declined since November 2024, according to SteamDB. This minimalistic game involves clicking a banana image repeatedly, but its true appeal lies in the potential for financial gain. Players can collect virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items fetching high prices, such as a "Special Golden Banana" that sold for $1,378.58.

The game's meteoric rise can be attributed to its unique selling point: the possibility of earning Steam Wallet funds with minimal effort. In an interview with Polygon in June 2024, team developer Hery described the game as a "legal 'Infinite money glitch.'" However, this surge in popularity also attracted automated bots designed 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. Despite these efforts, it remains uncertain whether the current 100,000+ players are all genuine. Following its 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 persisted, with November 2024 witnessing a significant drop from 400,000 to just over 100,000. Although the game saw a temporary surge at the start of 2025, it has not fully recovered since.

As of now, Banana maintains a strong presence with 112,966 concurrent players and ranks 7th on Steam's Most Played Games list. However, a sudden dip to around 50,000 players was observed on March 16th, 2025, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The cause of this drop is unclear, and it's challenging to determine if bots were involved. The overall trend of declining player counts suggests that the game's initial novelty is waning.

The developers have been proactive in updating the game, introducing trading cards, event drops, and quality-of-life improvements. They have also engaged the community by allowing user-generated banana art through the Steam Workshop, with creators earning a percentage of sales. However, it remains to be seen whether these efforts will help Banana regain its former glory without the aid of bots.