Banana is a simple game. Click the banana and watch the number go up. Do it once every three hours and you get a banana for your efforts. It’s not always the same banana, but it usually is. You could argue this concept barely even qualifies as a game. Even the click counter wasn’t there on release, so the experience used to be even more barebones.
Yet Banana peaked at over 917,000 concurrent Steam players in June 2024, two months after its debut. It still has over 120,000 concurrent players every day six months later. Going by its all-time player peak, Banana is one of the 10 most popular Steam games of all time, currently ranked at number nine. No matter how you cut it, that’s pretty bananas.
Why is Banana so successful?
The main reason behind Banana’s success is that its drops also function as Steam Community Market items, allowing them to be sold to other users on Valve’s storefront. Even the most common bananas hold intrinsic value because they can be exchanged for Steam Wallet funds.
In a July 2024 interview with Polygon, the Banana community manager—who just goes by “Hery” (not Henry)—said its early success was driven by bots. Those were unleashed on the game as soon as people realized it generates an infinite supply of Steam Community Market items. The developers addressed this in a May 2024 update that added bot idling prevention.
While bots may have been the reason for the game’s initial success, this early momentum attracted real players who apparently stuck around.
After all, Banana hit its all-time concurrent player peak a full month after its bot-prevention update rolled out. So, assuming the anti-bot measures worked as intended, it seems that tens of thousands of real people continue to “play” Banana every day.
Most Banana-made items go for just a few cents a pop, though there are some outliers. The most valuable drop, the Crypticnana, had three sales above $1,000 since June 2024—the biggest of which was for $1,696.27.
So, Banana‘s success is at least partially driven by people trying to score some of its most valuable drops. Although most fail to do so, their consolation prize is still a banana skin that can be sold for at least a penny, or combined into more valuable items.
As for why anyone would buy such a thing, the simplest answer is speculation. The skins that the game drops have technically been equippable since June, but since Banana isn’t a multiplayer game, there’s no one to show them to.
Therefore, it’s hard to think of any motivation for buying one of these drops other than thinking it will go up in value. Well, that or flaunting wealth via a Steam profile showcase.
The minds behind Banana
The Banana Steam page mentions three developers: AestheticSpartan, O’Brian, and Sky, who’s also listed as the game’s publisher. None of them have any other products to their name.
There’s also that Hery guy interviewed by Polygon over the summer, though it’s unclear if that’s an alias of one of these three developers or a different person. The Polygon interview does state that the game was made by four people from around the world, ranging from Germany to South America.
The German member of the team is likely the Steam user who goes by “Robert Partyson.” Although not listed as a developer on the game’s Steam forums, this person was responding to some Banana-related questions on April 22, a day ahead of the game’s release.
He’s also the source of the claim that Banana is just a “worse” version of Egg, a similar clicker game released in February 2024. It’s currently unknown who any of these people actually are.
How Banana generates revenue
Banana is a free-to-play game with no ads or microtransactions. As such, its monetization opportunities are limited, and basically come down to two things: Steam Community Market sales and merch.
Every time an item is sold on the Steam Community Market, Valve takes a 5% cut, but no less than $0.01. The game developer who made the item gets a cut of the sale as well. For Valve titles like Team Fortress 2, the share can reach up to 10% of the transaction, but third-party developers, such as the creators of Banana, typically receive less.
While the exact amount varies, what’s clear is that this developer cut also cannot be lower than $0.01. You can test this yourself by listing any item on the Steam Community Market for $0.01 and see that your listing will actually state $0.03 as the asking price, which is split three-way between you, Valve, and the developer of whatever game your item came from.
The Steam Community Market doesn’t provide an aggregated overview of how many items from a given game have been sold. But it does list median prices from realized sales for individual items.
For instance, the platform states that the most basic Banana skin sells around 1m units within 24 hours on December 9, 2024. Assuming each sale occurred at the minimum $0.03 listing price, the Banana developer made $10,059.16 from this drop within that single day.
The Steam Community Market currently lists 215 different Banana skins, most of which don’t have nearly as much sales volume as the basic drop. But a lot of stuff is definitely switching hands on a daily basis, so revenue is trickling in.
New updates coming soon!
— Banana Game (@bananaxsteam) August 8, 2024
Exchanges, Crates, Upgrades 👀
Don't forget to pick up a shirt while you can! https://t.co/jwFWBVkCXZ
Size Chart included
everyone gets their own unique t-shirt!#Banana #steam #shirt #merch pic.twitter.com/u87BpXhijz
The Banana developers have also capitalized on the game’s popularity by selling merchandise. This effort was seemingly successful, as all of their “Banana Count Tee” variants have been sold out for weeks. However, as of the time of writing, the shop has been taken offline, leaving fans unable to purchase more items.
Is Banana a scam?
Even before it became evident that Banana was being heavily botted, some players accused it of being a scam. The developers have consistently denied these allegations, maintaining that the game’s popularity is genuine and largely fueled by people eager to earn some Steam Wallet funds. Hery called this an “infinite money glitch” in his Polygon interview.
In theory, it would be possible for the Banana developers to manually create super rare skins, add them to their alt accounts, and sell them for profit. However, this scenario is unlikely at best.
Any “infinite” funds earned this way would only be spendable on Steam, limiting their usefulness. Moreover, Banana already seems to be making decent money through legitimate item sales, giving its developers little incentive to risk their reputation on such a scheme. After all, they seem to have a very profitable thing going on right now.
