What Is ‘Banana,’ The Game Where You Click A Banana, With 136,000 Players On Steam?

Every so often I am still surprised in this business, and that’s certainly the case with the new saga of “Banana,” a game where you click a banana, which is suddenly tearing up the Steam charts.

While the game came out around mid-May, it has slowly been building as a meme over the past month, and now it has just reached 136,202 concurrent players on Steam today.

Yes, it’s true that clicker games have been popular and addicting in the past. Cookie Clicker is the most obvious one that comes to mind, but that’s not what this is, with its mass-cookie producing grandmas and such. That’s an actual game. This is…clicking a banana. You click the banana, a number comes up. It tracks how many times you’ve clicked the banana. That’s it.

This is, of course, very funny in an absurdist way, to see this game with this many players currently the eighth most-played game on Steam ahead of Elden Ring, Team Fortress 2 and Stardew Valley.

What’s happening here? There are a few theories, as it was mentioned by YouTubers in videos about Team Fortress 2’s ongoing bot problems. The idea is that the game is populated by bots, rather than those very interested in clicking a banana.

But the main idea is that it appears that you can earn Steam money by playing the game. Apparently you can earn skins in the game every three hours, which mostly cost 3 cents. You get 1 cent by selling them, Valve and the developer get 1 cent each. But some…sell for more. I saw a report that one sold for $400.

I don’t—is this trying to prove some sort of point? Is it a scam to grind out cents from Steam, Office Space style? Here’s a breakdown of the potential math of this printing money for the developer using this system:

• In the game, a skin is obtained every 3 hours. That skin is worth an average of 0.03 euros.
• “Assuming that each player gets the maximum number of skins in a day, that is 24/3 = 8, and then manages to sell them, by the end of the day each player would earn:
• 0.03 * 8 = 0.24 euros, minus the commissions for Steam (0.08 euros) and for the developer (0.08 euros), which makes a net profit of 0.08 euros.
• However, if we consider the total number of players (currently 42,000), the developer will earn:
• 0.08 * 42000 = 3360 euros per day!”

Since that math was calculated, the game now has over three times as many players, so that would be 10,000 euros a day instead. But it’s unclear if these calculations are accurate.

Whatever is happening, players are on board with the joke. It currently has “Very Positive” reviews on Steam, and they’re all essentially memeing. Here’s one:

“The game simply called "Banana" isn't just a casual pastime; it's become an unexpected lifeline. During a particularly challenging period in my life, its simplicity provided a much-needed refuge. Each click on a virtual banana became a momentary reprieve from the chaos of reality. The lighthearted humor woven into its mechanics lifted my spirits when they were at their lowest. In a way, "Banana" saved me, reminding me that even amidst life's storms, there are moments of joy waiting to be discovered, one banana click at a time.”

Just bizarre. If this is mainly just a money printer, its escalating popularity could get it shut down by Steam, particularly if it’s now being bot farmed. We’ll see what happens, but yes, this is very weird.

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