You may need seen that the second most played game on Steam proper now’s Banana, which launched again in April, however has seen an explosion of recognition over the previous couple of weeks. What’s Banana? It is a free idle clicker wherein you click on on an image of a banana to make numbers go up. If the quantity goes up sufficient, the sport drops extra photos of bananas into your Steam stock. Really, it is not even an idle clicker – merely leaving the sport open all day is sufficient to generate a gradual however regular provide of those banana photos.
There are a selection of banana photos, some animated, from crystalline bananas via uwu bananas to banana black holes, all of them “made by the group in Discord” in accordance with the Steam page. The banana photos will be offered on the Steam Market, with the builders (and Valve) taking a reduce from each sale. Most of them are offered for pennies, however there are a uncommon few which are traded for appreciable sums. On the time of writing, there are 4 “Crypticnanas” on the Market that supposedly go for £1335.09 a peel. The homely “Thickglassnana”, in the meantime, will be yours for a mere 71p, which is across the worth of a bunch of tasty, potassium-rich real-life bananas from Sainsburys.
It is the buying and selling factor, in fact, that underpins the Banana sport’s recognition – this and a dollop of FOMO, a love of shiny objects, and a faint hope, particularly amongst despairing video video games journalists, that Banana may develop into one thing greater than it’s. To their credit score, the sport’s creators aren’t making any grandiose Curiosity-Dice-esque guarantees. One of many devs, Hery, has overtly described Banana as “a authorized ‘Infinite cash glitch'” in dialog with Polygon.
As you may anticipate of a authorized infinite cash glitch, Banana has an enormous botting drawback, and Hery is bracingly upfront about this too. “For the reason that sport takes mainly one p.c to no assets of your PC, individuals are abusing as much as 1000 various accounts in an effort to get Rarer drops or no less than drops in bulk,” they instructed Polygon. At one level final week, round 94,000 of the sport’s roughly 141,000 gamers have been bots. In the present day, the sport peaked at 875,542 customers.
The builders say they’re attempting to get Valve to clamp down on the bots, however it appears apparent to me that Banana was designed with this end result in thoughts. There have been arguments that Banana is an outright rip-off of some variety – I am undecided it matches any specific authorized definition, however with its appetisingly naff fruit designs and promise of instantaneous wealth, it is definitely geared to reel within the sort of participant who falls sufferer to scams. It is no big shock that one in all its creators, Theselions, has been concerned in dodgy cryptocurrency shenanigans, although Banana itself would not seem to run off the blockchain.
“As you all have heard by now Theselions was once concerned in a steam market ‘bitcoin’ rip-off/bug,” the crew’s co-owner aestheticspartan revealed on Discord yesterday, by way of Eurogamer. “We didn’t find out about this till current movies began to level this out and we had a chat nearly instantly with the entire crew in regards to the scenario. We gave him the possibility to clarify the scenario to us and we all know he’s exhibiting regret and is sorry about what occurred previously.” Theselions and the Banana crew have now parted methods.
That is just about all there may be to find out about Banana on the time of publication. I truthfully hope that is the one piece I write in regards to the factor, however I am positive I’ve simply jinxed myself by penning these phrases. The ray of hope is that Steam gamers appear very alive to Banana’s important banality and vapidity, to the purpose that some are taking part in it for the fun of being the butt of the joke: probably the most standard person tags for the sport is “psychological horror”.
Replace twentieth June 2024: Did I write “that is just about all there may be to find out about Banana”? That was earlier than I watched Jauwn’s deep dive into its workings and origins, which makes clear that the entire thing is shady as hell. Keep away. Thanks KDR_11k for passing it on.