One way to know which are the successful titles among PC video games is to look at the statistics of Steam. This is the digital distribution platform pioneer launched in 2003 by Valve and has about 120 million users monthly assets, which allows for a fairly accurate map of what is being played and what is not. If you check today which are the most played titles, you will see that the first position is occupied by the incombustible Counter Strike 2. And in the second, a title that two months ago nobody knew. It is about Banana and it is a clicker-game that is gaining more players than titles like DOTA 2, Elden Ring or GTA V.
Banana It is a clicking game, an expression that indicates that it is limited to just that. That is, you don’t click to, for example, direct a character to a location or attack an objective. Clicking does not generate any action, they only accumulate. As the title suggests, at Banana you do it on a static banana. And she is already there.
The game is free and was launched on April 23, but its spectacular growth has occurred in recent days. A week ago, there were around 100,000 players and today there are 813,444although it has had peaks, which will surely exceed up to 884,469above the maximum that one of the 2023 hits has obtained in almost a year, Baldur’s Gate 3. On June 17, briefly, became the most played title on Steam for a few hours.
And what is the reason for Banana’s popularity? It is true that you do nothing but click on a banana that does nothing, but this has its rewards. Every 3 hours, the player receives a new banana that automatically goes to their Steam account inventory.. These bananas, of which there are dozens and are created by the game’s community on Discord, They can be sold on the Steam Community Market and there are people who buy them. Some sell for a few cents and the vast majority range between $5 and $20, but a handful, the rarest ones, reach several hundred. and even exceed $1,000. For nothing more than clicking, it’s not bad if you’re lucky.
Some examples. Crypticnanais a banana that was sold for $378 on May 31 and of which only 25 exist. On June 11 it was sold again for $514 and is currently on sale for $514. $1,696. It is the one that is most valued at the moment. Another banana, the Special Golden Banana was sold for $1,378 last June 9.
Banana, which is just a 60 MB download and has the lowest minimum requirements you’ll find, has been developed by the studio Sky and it is, as stated Heryone of the developers, told Polygon ‘a pretty stupid game, a copy of Egg but much worse’.
The interest of the players in this title is what it is, not exactly the entertainment. This has helped a good part of the players not be humans but bots trying to get skins, the Banana models, that have value and can be sold. But it seems that their proportion is decreasing as Banana’s success increases and the player base expands. It is a highly speculative model reminiscent of the craze of NFTs a couple of years ago, and it will last as long as it has to, which probably won’t be too long, but until then it doesn’t hurt to try your luck, hundreds of thousands of players have thought.
‘I think the reason it became popular is because it is an “infinite money legal mistake.” Users earn money from a free game while selling free virtual items‘, says Hery.