Summary
Steam’s latest clicker game sensation has users trading virtual bananas on the Steam Community Market for hundreds of real-world dollars. Just what is going on?
This Game Is Bananas
Bananais a free clicker game that has taken the Steam charts by storm. The extent of the “gameplay” involves clicking an on-screen banana, which admittedly isn’t dissimilar toother types of clicker games. Every three and 18 hours, you’ll get given an in-game item in the form of a banana.
These bananas are random drops designed by the game’s community on Discord, with varying degrees of rarity. There are bananas that look like 3D meshes, bananas that look like games of pong, bananas with pandas and cats on them, and so on.
These in-game items may be given out for free, but they can be traded on the Steam Community Market for real money. You can buy and sell bananas from as little as a few cents up to hundreds or thousands of dollars. The rarer the banana, the higher the value the community has assigned to it.
What’s Really Going On Here?
Because of the game’s popularity, the perceived value of rare bananas has increased sharply. Head to theBanana Community Marketto see what prices bananas are currently selling for.
At the time of writing, Banana is the third most-played “game” on the Steam platform, only beaten byDota 2andCounter-Strike 2. The most expensive used item is the “Crypticnana” of which there are only 25 in existence. Current prices range from around $800 to $1800. Gaming peripheral manufacturer Razer has also gotten in on the action, with Razer-branded bananas selling for around $65.
It’s still a bit of a mystery what’s really going on here. The game makes no claims that in-game items have any inherent value so on the surface, Banana seems innocent enough. The game doesn’t appear to be doing anything in the background (so it’s not a stealthy crypto miner), and you don’t even need to leave it open as long as you open it regularly for a few clicks to collect your fruit.
PC Gamer’s Harvey Randallconceded“what surprised me most was a lack of genuine sketchiness.” TheGamer’s Tessa Kaur takes a different tone,citinga lot of bot activity, a (now removed) team member’s history with a pump-and-dump scheme, and obscured drop rates that mean “developers can manually generate ultra rare bananas for themselves or their friends.”
For most, the game appears to be a meme rather than a get-rich-quick scheme. There’s a single Steam Achievement to earn, which is unlocked with your first click. An update added Steam Workshop support, so users can now submit bananas and potentially make some revenue from them though there’s no guarantee an item will be accepted.
Skepticism doesn’t seem to have dampened Steam’s appetite for Banana, and the vast majority of items are worth little more than a few cents. One Steam Communitymembersums it up neatly: “Technically I made 0,30$ for free. Yeah. I mean it’s stupid, but you just have to let the game open in the background… No need to click anything so I jumped in lmao.”
To learn more about the game, head over to theBanana Discord. If you prefer Steam games with more gameplay, check outour Steam summer sale recommendations.
