Banana is a game in which players repeatedly click on a banana, and that's about it. Think Cookie Clicker, but instead of all the fun features that the game adds, you just click on the cookie endlessly.
Despite that simplicity, the game has become a massive hit since its launch in April.
With a peak concurrent player count of over 860,000, Banana is now the second most played game on Steam, trailing behind Counter-Strike 2. This surge in popularity is remarkable, especially considering it had just 100,000 players a week ago. In terms of peak count, Banana even threatens to surpass Baldur's Gate 3, which has a peak count of 875,343 players.
It seems likely that Banana will soon push BG3 out of Steam's top 10 all-time list.
While the game may initially seem dull, there is more to it than meets the eye. Persistent clicking eventually leads to the appearance of another banana, which players can trade or sell on the Steam market. Occasionally, a rare and more valuable banana drops, making the repetitive clicking potentially lucrative. Rare bananas can sell for hundreds of dollars, with the top-priced banana fetching over $1,300.
As the game's developers told Polygon, "I do believe that the reason why it mostly caught on is because it’s a legal ‘infinite money glitch.'"
Subsequently, the game's minimal resource demand on PCs has led to botting issues, with developers telling Polygon that some users are running "up to 1,000 accounts" to maximize rare drop chances. As the game's popularity grows, the developers say they are updating banana designs to manage the rapid influx of players and content.
In short, the virality of Banana can be explained by general tongue-in-cheek internet humor and the stupid amount of money one can make, which turns this boring clicker game into a very weird pseudo-NFT trading card simulator.
