Why are so many people obsessed with the Banana clicker game?

We’d previously reported that 30,000 concurrent players were, at some point in the last month, playing Banana, a game that amounted to no more than just clicking the still image of a banana. At that time, Banana had more players than Diablo IV, Fallout 76, and was close to beating the next game on Steam’s chart list, Cyberpunk 2077.

Those were already historic numbers for such a novelty title, but things have gotten even more out of hand, as the Banana invasion has just crossed over the 142,000-player mark. Because it’s hard to look at a number and understand its real-world implications, I’ll let you know that we’re talking about a single JPEG-based game that’s currently bigger on Steam than Elden Ring, Call Of Duty, GTA V, and is aiming to take PUBG: Battlegrounds’ 4th position at 156,000.

So what’s special about Banana?

To be absolutely honest, nothing. It’s not even an original game. In fact, Banana is pretty much the same game as Egg, another JPEG clicker that somehow never managed to reach such heights. Both games are simply about clicking a still image and seeing a number above the banana go up as you click. You could wonder that people are trying to see who scores the most clicks, but that’s not it. On top of its ability to let players pass the time in a relaxed way, what makes Banana tick is the promise of scoring some cash. Yes, it turns out that Banana allows players to make some serious(ly low) amounts of cash.

Banana‘s collectibles work like Steam’s collectible game cards, but there’s a twist. Steam gives you a limited number of cards even if you simply have a game opened on your PC’s background, whereas the bananas you can earn in Banana are limitless. You can earn them by playing the game for a minute, then clicking every three hours, and then you might earn a rare banana once every 18 hours.

On top of them being worth some cash, there are various different bananas, and some of them have names and look fun enough to, at the very least, get an ashamed chuckle out of me.

Most listings don’t go over a few cents, but a few of them manage to go over the two digits. We’re yet to see if this huge increase in numbers will make these values shoot through the skies, or if anyone actually buys some of the already ludicrously-priced bananas.

Best of all, however, is that despite what it looks like, Banana is completely blockchain or NFT-unrelated.

You too can now go Bananas on Steam.