"Banana Game Sees Sharp Decline in Steam Player Count"

After reaching its peak in June 2024, Banana on Steam has since experienced a decrease in concurrent players. Dive deeper to understand its rise to fame and the subsequent decline in player engagement.

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 soared to an all-time peak of 917,272 players in June 2024. However, it has struggled to maintain those numbers, with a significant decline noted from November 2024 to the present, according to SteamDB.

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 rare items like the "Special Golden Banana" fetching high prices, such as $1,378.58.

The game's rapid 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 in popularity, however, also attracted automated bots farming 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 in order to get Rarer drops or at least drops in bulk."

In response, the developers implemented bot prevention measures in May 2024. Despite this, it's unclear how many of the game's 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 seeing a significant drop from 400,000 to just over 100,000. Although the game briefly doubled its player count at the start of 2025, it has not recovered from this decline.

Currently, Banana holds steady 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 remains 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 is fading.

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 percentage of sales. Whether these efforts will help Banana regain its former glory without bot assistance remains to be seen.