guides
What Is The Viral 'Banana' Game On Steam And How Do People Make Money From It?
A massive amount of people are going bananas for virtual bananas: a clicker video game fittingly named Banana has been going viral on Steam lately, reaching top-three most played game on the platform in mid-June.
At first look, the game doesn't look too appealing, so what's keeping the players hooked? Is it mostly bots? Learn this in our brief explainer about the viral sensation.
What Is 'Banana' Game?
The Banana game is a simplistic clicker video game that offers very little in terms of gameplay. You install the game, you click on the banana, and the game tracks how many times you click on it. The only interface in the game is the clickable banana in the middle of the screen, a settings window that has a Discord link, and a button that takes you to the Steam store for the game.
Unlike other popular clicker games such as Cookie Clicker and Adventure Capitalist, the game really offers zero development or any other gameplay in addition to clicking the fruit and getting the number higher.
So what's keeping thousands of players in the game? The secret is that a major part of the experience happens outside of it. Every three to 18 hours, the players get a drop in their Steam inventories: a banana-themed item that can be sold on Steam Market. Every so often, a new type of item gets added to the drop pool — so far there are 77 different versions of them.
Most of them go for pennies, providing you with the prime "Your item has been sold on Steam Marketplace." However, some rarer bananas such as Crypticnana and Sad Hamster Banana are being sold for hundreds of dollars. On June 10th, someone bought Special Golden Banana for a whopping $1,378, the biggest sale that's happened so far.
That's the main reason players keep the game launched. It barely takes any resources and gives you a chance of getting a rare banana to sell to somebody else. While the player numbers do look impressive, with the game so far peaking at 377,000 simultaneous players, the game developers (a team of four devs scattered across the globe) admit that many of these game instances are simply bots who are farming digital bananas.
Now, why people are even buying these bananas? Some just like collecting digital stuff, while others hope to sell them at a larger price when the game becomes even more viral and continues drawing a banana-hungry audience (quite similar to how Ponzi schemes work, except that the game is completely free).
Where To Find The 'Banana' Game?
If you want to join the bonanza and try your luck in getting a rare drop, the game has been available on Steam since April 2024.
Simply search for "banana" in Steam and it will be the first link you see. Alternatively, you can just click here and it will take you directly to the game.
How To Get 'Banana' Drops? Do Clicks Matter?
To get drops in Banana, you simply have to have the game open and occasionally get in a click or two (there are assumptions that the more you click, the more you get, but these are incorrect). The drops happen automatically every three to 18 hours. The items can be found in your Steam inventory, from where you can then sell them.
How Do I Get My 'Banana' Into The Game?
Feeling like leaving some digital legacy? The banana items for the game are created by users in the official Discord server for the game. You can join and send your artistic takes on the yellow fruit for the devs to consider here.
For the full history of the Banana clicker game, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.
