In a baffling turn of events, several of the most popular games on Steam have been overthrown by none other than Banana. This includes heavy hitters such as Destiny 2, Apex Legends, and GTA V. But what is the secret behind this sudden boom and why is Banana, which was released back in April, suddenly trending on Steam now?
What is Banana Clicker?
This might be shocking to some of you, but there’s nothing more to Banana than clicking the image of a Banana in a small Unity-based window. Then, you watch the number of clicks go up. Seriously, that’s all there is to the game. However, that begs the question, why are so many people playing this?
To answer that question we’d have to look at the game’s marketplace. The Banana Clicker game was released with the sole intent of selling the various rare Bananas inside the game for real-life money on the Steam Marketplace. Whenever you click the Banana, there is a low percentage chance that you’ll receive a rare Banana and add it to your inventory. Some of these Bananas are very rare and have a limited supply.
Why are So Many People Playing Banana?
If you’ve been following so far, you can see how this is the perfect setup for a speculative market to be created. However, people started taking this to the next level. They began botting the game to get the rarest and most expensive Bananas. In fact, we’ve already seen some Bananas sell for several hundred dollars. Others are currently available for sale at amounts above a thousand dollars.
The developer implemented a new policy to counter botting, which changed the drop rate of rare bananas. You can only click once every three hours, and you can get a rare banana once every 18 hours. This has resulted in people leaving the game open on their computers in the background for 18 hours straight just to get a chance at getting the rare and expensive bananas such as the elusive Spacenana.
The game has managed to hit a 301,064 peak concurrent player count in the last 24 hours on SteamDB. This number only seems to be going higher. There are a total of 77 types of different Bananas on the Steam Market right now with some fetching ridiculously high prices.
If you’re still confused about this, you have every right to be. Essentially, what Banana Clicker has done, has been recreating the scarcity-based speculative market that we often see in Cryptocurrencies. People are rushing to get their hands on these useless Banana tokens. They believe their value might go up in the future.
That’s the reason why Banana Clicker has been trending on Steam. It will likely continue to do so until the market crashes or people get bored. While you’re here, read how the GDC reveals a lack of interest in Crypto games and how Crypto caused Valorant Pro City’s high elo League.
