By now, pretty much every gaming news outlet has been talking about the weirdly popular clicker game Banana. I did an article a few days ago, where I took the plunge myself to see what all the fuss was about. Spoiler alert: I didn’t see the appeal (yes, we’ve made that joke already). But it’s tough to deny how much it’s exploded on Steam. Even the developers themselves could not anticipate it.
Recently, the team behind Banana posted a message where a decision has been made based on the changing of some of the community-made bananas. Changed into “something else,” it seems. As such, the studio is “reviewing all the bananas that are public,” having taken on some new artists. The post goes on to say that things “blew up faster than any of us could dream [of].”
Things have gotten to the point where some are accusing the game of being a bit dodgy, to say the least. However, one of the developers has assured everyone that Banana is not a scam, though they acknowledge a former member of the team has been embroiled in suspicious activity in the past. That person has since “parted ways” with the company.
This is, indeed, bananas
How popular is the game currently? Well, when last I checked in, it was well into the 800,000 concurrent player mark. Now, though? According to the latest data from the third-party site SteamDB, Banana appears to be fast-approaching the one million mark, having registered 909,733 players earlier today.
On top of that, it’s still sitting pretty as the second-most played game on Steam. At the time of writing, it’s ahead of Elden Ring, which will almost certainly be making a beeline for the top spot once the Shadow of the Eldtree expansion unlocks later today.
Seriously, there are some AAA titles that can only dream of this type of popularity. It might not last, but Banana is proof that games are more than just their pixelated boundaries. And also that I really didn’t try hard enough in my programming classes.
