Banana, a free-to-play game that offers no real gameplay, has become one ofSteam’s most played games and sparked a worrying new trend on the platform.
Despite being released back in April,Banana surged in popularity earlier this monthand has since gone on to peak at over 858,000 players, according toSteamDB. If you’ve not had the fortune of checking out this riveting title yet, Banana is a “clicker game” in which players simply click a banana and increase the number. Thus receiving even more bananas.
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According to thegame’s description on Steam, users will receive a special banana drop every 3 and 18 hours, which is where the intrigue behind this odd game begins.
Players will receive various banana items for playing the game, which they can then sell on the Steam marketplace. While most drops will sell for around 3 cents, there are rarer drops that have been selling for up to $500. These items offer nothing to the player in-game and are comparable to the likes of NFTs, with players hopeful that their value will increase over time.
Multiple Banana-esque Titles Spike In Popularity
While nothing about Banana goes against Steam’s terms of service, users do believe it’s time for Valve to “step in” after multiple other titles with the same concept have spiked in popularity.
Cats, Cucumber, and Egg have all seen a huge increase in players ever since the recent success of Banana. While Cucumber and Egg both average around 8,000 concurrent players, Cats has peaked at over 56,000 players at the time of writing this article.
Over on Reddit, users are calling for Valve to ban the games from the platform. “If Valve won’t do anything about it there will be a plague of this shit,“one user saidafter saying the titles “should be banned asap.”
But not everyone sees the influx of these so-called “games” as an issue. “Players get money, devs get money, Steam gets money. The only people losing are the people buying virtual bananas. I feel like everyone wins here except the people buying? I have no issue with it,“one userstated.
The Steam community appears to be divided on the matter, with some stating that Valve shouldn’t step in as these games don’t break the platform’s terms of service, while others call it a “con.”
As mentioned by other users, Valve stepping in and removing these games is unlikely. But what’s more likely is that this sudden fad dies down over the next couple of months and we forget all about it.
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