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

After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has since experienced a noticeable decrease in concurrent players. Let's delve into the details of its popularity and the factors contributing to this 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 in the gaming world. This seemingly simple clicker game achieved an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024 but has struggled to reach those heights again. Data from SteamDB reveals a significant drop in player numbers from November 2024 onwards.

For those new to the game, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that challenges traditional gaming norms. Its gameplay is minimalistic, revolving around clicking a banana image repeatedly. However, the real attraction lies in the financial incentives it offers. Players can collect virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items like the "Special Golden Banana" fetching prices as high as $1,378.58.

The game's initial surge in popularity was driven by the allure of earning Steam Wallet funds with minimal effort. Hery, the game's developer, described it as a "legal 'Infinite money glitch'" in an interview with Polygon in June 2024. However, this 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."

To combat this issue, the developers introduced bot prevention measures in May 2024. Despite these efforts, it's unclear how many of the game's over 100,000 players are genuine. Post-peak, the game's concurrent player count saw a sharp decline. By July 2024, the average number of players dropped to 549,091, and this downward trend continued, with November 2024 witnessing a drop from 400,000 to just over 100,000 players. Although there was a brief surge at the start of 2025, the game has not managed to recover from this decline.

Currently, Banana maintains a strong presence with 112,966 concurrent players and ranks 7th on Steam's Most Played Games list. However, a significant dip to around 50,000 players was observed on March 16th, 2025, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The cause of this sudden drop remains unclear, and it's uncertain whether bots played a role. The general trend of decreasing player counts suggests that the game's initial novelty is 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 the sales. Whether these efforts will help the game regain its peak popularity without the aid of bots remains to be seen.