Banana Game Sees Sharp Decline in Steam Player Count

After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has since experienced a significant decrease in concurrent players. This article delves into the game's popularity and the factors contributing to its player 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 sensation. This seemingly simple clicker game reached an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, it has not been able to replicate those numbers since. According to SteamDB, there has been a notable decline in player numbers from November 2024 to the present.

For those new to the game, Banana is a free-to-play clicker game that breaks the mold of traditional gaming. Launched in April 2024, its gameplay is minimalistic, centered around clicking a banana image repeatedly. The real attraction, however, is the potential for financial gain. Players can collect virtual banana items and sell them on the Steam Community Market, with some rare items, like the "Special Golden Banana," fetching high prices, such as $1,378.58.

The game's rapid rise to fame can be attributed to several key factors. The promise of earning Steam Wallet funds with minimal effort initially drew in 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, however, 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 implemented bot prevention measures in May 2024. It remains unclear how many of the game's 100,000+ players are genuine. Following these measures, the game's concurrent player count saw a sharp decline. By July 2024, the average number of players had dropped to 549,091. This downward trend continued, with November 2024 seeing a significant drop from 400,000 to just over 100,000 players. Despite a brief increase at the start of 2025, the game has not recovered 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 sudden drop to around 50,000 players was observed on March 16th, 2025, between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC. The cause of this dip is unclear, and it's challenging to ascertain if bots played a role. The overall trend of decreasing player counts suggests that the game's initial novelty may be 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. Whether these efforts will help the game regain its former glory without the aid of bots remains to be seen.