A seemingly innocent Banana game on Steam is making players hundreds of dollars, and that’s why it has risen to the top of the charts.
Counter-Strike 2 skins are frequently likened to NFTs due to their high liquidity and rarity, but both gaming and digital asset communities have never embraced these comparisons. The main difference, according to skin fans, is that CS2 skins have in-game functionality. Now, a clicker game has surfaced that shares more similarities with an NFT than a video game, and some people are concerned.
Banana has become one of Steam’s most popular games thanks to its marketplace economy, and players could potentially turn a pretty penny just by leaving it open.
What is the Banana game on Steam?
Banana is currently the third most popular game on Steam, beating the likes of Grand Theft Auto 5, Apex Legends, PUBG, and more. It has more than 507,000 players hoping to get a rare banana drop.
The game currently has “very positive” reviews on Steam, with 90% of players out of 10,000 giving it a high rating.
“The absolutely euphoric state I reached upon discovering this game has trumped my son’s birth. My wedding day, and the time I was banned from my local gamestop. I love you Banana,” said a Steam reviewier.
One of the most played games on Steam is a free-to-play clicker, which has a simple gameplay. You only need to click on a simple picture of a Banana. When players do, a number above the banana goes up. There’s a settings menu to change the game’s resolution and make it fullscreen. That’s it.
However, unlike a regular clicker game, Bnana doesn’t have an incremental system. No matter how many times you click, the banana picture will stay the same. But, the game does reward players random skins that can be sold on the Steam Marketplace. These items serve no functionality whatsoever.
Why does Banana have such a high player count?
Banana has Steam drops enabled. If you’re lucky, users may get a rare Banana picture in their Steam inventory, which can be traded and sold on Steam Marketplace. This has attracted a flock of Web3 gamers looking to make easy money.
Some players are leaving their screens on for hours since most Bananas are worth something, rare or not. Take Picklenana, for instance, now worth $38. It was dropped to a player who stayed active for over 250 hours.
Players don’t even need to click the banana to get drops. They regularly get bananas every three hours just for keeping it open. Currently, the rarest banana, titled “Crypticnana,” is priced at $788. The cheapest bananas are selling at just a few cents. But with bananas dropping every 3 hours on average, some players could be stockpiling them with the intention of selling large quantities at discounted rates on various accounts.
“Unfortunately, we are currently facing some problems around botting, since the game takes basically 1% to no resources of your PC, people are abusing up to 1000 alternative accounts in order to get Rarer drops or at least drops in bulk,” the developer team member Hery told Polygon.
Is the Banana game on Steam legit?
Banana on Steam is a legit game, but players are calling it an infinite money glitch. While on the surface, it may appear to be an innocent game, Banana may come under scrutiny due to its vagueness regarding items.
The developer has labeled some banana pictures as rare, but there are no clear factors determining their rarity. The banana drops are pretty frequent, with a drop guaranteed every 3 to 18 hours. Some claim that the 18-hour drop is considered the rarest, but the real factors determining this rarity are still unknown and hidden from the player base.
The game system is designed to make each banana rare because items are randomly added to and removed from the supply pool. According to Steam listings, some bananas drop less frequently than others, but the drop chances are completely unknown and random.
This means that an item you obtained three days ago could very well be gone today. For example, “The OG Banana” only dropped during the first three days of the game’s release, so it’s basically extinct now. Despite the uncertainty, players are eagerly collecting these items, which has likely spiked the player count.
Currently, the game does not display dropped item owners on Steam, leading to suspicions among players that developers could manipulate the market by giving rare items to friends and family.