A Banana Clicker Game Is Going Viral on Steam – Here’s Why

What is a banana worth? A diamond banana can be worth $70 or $165, depending on the day. The gentleman banana – a banana wearing a hat and dress shoes – is worth less than a dollar. The pickle banana, a banana-shaped pickle, costs about $15. There’s even one banana, the gold, shiny banana, that has sold for more than $1,000. But most bananas, no matter what they look like, are worth just pennies – even the dark matter banana. Does this all make sense to you? It shouldn’t, unless you’re one of the thousands of people who “play.” bananaan idle clicker game where you simply click on a banana to increase a number.

OK, so what is banana? Once you download banana and boot it up, a window will pop up. It’s a banana on a puke green background. Click on the banana and the numbers will go up. I’m at 772. And… that’s it! All you have to do is click. Every so often, a banana will drop right into your Steam inventory: one of dozens of differently decorated bananas currently available, like the Diamond or Gentleman Banana.bananain the developer theselions’ own words, banana is pretty much a stupid game, a copy of egg but much worse,” development team member Hery told Polygon.

Last week, more than 141,000 people clicked on a banana at the same time. according to SteamDB. This number has now almost doubled. Many people play bananabut the numbers are not quite right: banana has a bot problem; Hery told Polygon that a third of those 141,000 are real players—around 47,000 people. (They contacted Valve support to find out how to stop the problem.) But since then bananacontinued to grow. On June 10, more than 252,000 computers banana open. It is likely that more of these players are “real”; the game’s virality has continued to grow as more people learn about the game. The higher it ranks on SteamDB – right now it is just under Counterstrike 2 And Dota2 – the more people learn about the game.

“Unfortunately, we’re currently struggling with some issues related to bots, as the game basically uses 1% to no resources on your PC. People are abusing up to 1,000 alternate accounts to get rarer drops, or at least drops in bulk,” Hery said in the Discord chat.

Because you don’t have to do anything in banana To get a drop, just click every now and then. It’s easy to keep open in the background for legitimate players too.

Now we get closer to the value of bananas: Each banana is an item that goes into your Steam inventory, where it can then be bought and sold on the Steam Marketplace. (They have no function in the game.) It’s mostly a very low-stakes trade, as most bananas are worth just a few cents. My “Cherry Blossomana,” a banana painted with cherry blossoms, is worth $0.04. When someone buys it, I make money without doing anything. The rarer the banana, the more it brings in. A banana – the Crypticnana – sold on May 31st for $378.92; it’s a mystery banana of which there are only 25. On June 11th, the Crypticnana sold for $514. But the best banana is the Special Golden Banana (it is what it says on the can) which sold on June 9th for $1,378.58 and on June 11th for $964.67. Currently, only one banana is listed for sale for $1,345.01. In the meantime, I sold a Cherry Blossomnana for $0.02.

“I believe the reason it has caught on so much is because it is a legal ‘infinite money’ glitch,” Hery said. “Users are making money from a free game while selling free virtual items.”

Because yes, people Are to buy even the least valuable or rare bananas. It’s hard to say why – maybe because of the meme? Or because the investment is usually so small? People like collecting stuff, even virtual bananas. It’s not really an NFT, but it kind of works like one – albeit without blockchain involvement. It’s a very strange virtual trading card.

The money you earn from selling your virtual bananas goes into your Steam wallet, which you can use to buy things on Steam. The development team (a group of four people spread all over the world, from South America to Germany) earns most of its money from the banana Item Store, which sells certain bananas for $0.25. (Hery wouldn’t reveal how much they made from the Item Store.) But the developers also get a small percentage of marketplace sales, as does Valve, and the rest goes to the seller.

Several people on the banana Discord and Steam Forums have speculated about the validity of the game – is it some kind of scam? A Ponzi scheme? Does it have something to do with cryptocurrency or NFTs? A game made by the developer just to make money? Is there something hidden in the game? One can understand why people are suspicious. It’s weird. Hery said the team disagrees with all of these assessments. It’s just a stupid game of bananas.

Hery said banana will likely get updates, including a way for people to use their items to change the appearance of the banana in the game. There could also be a mini-game and perhaps a way to swap multiple bananas for another. Users can also submit banana art that will eventually be included in the game, and many of people have submitted designs on the banana Discord.

But right now it’s just a piece of cake.

Update (June 11): This story has been updated to reflect increasing player numbers.