One of the hottest games on Steam right now is Banana. There is a picture of a banana. You click it. That's the game. Despite being the idlest of idle games, it is currently sitting at #2 on Steam, and there are 804,756 players as I write this. The developers clearly didn't spend too much time making Banana. There is a banana and a counter, and since launch, they have added very minimal settings and a link to their item store, where they sell… more bananas. The brief video clip on the store page has an Nvidia app pop-up that they didn't wait to clear before recording. The favicon (does anyone still use favicons?) and lone image on their website are broken because they point to 127.0.0.1.
So, why is it so popular other than the tiny dopamine hit from the game's sole achievement? Every few hours, you get a digital banana, or skin (pun intended, I assume), with a chance for a rare drop every 18 hours. You can then sell or trade your bananas in the Steam Market. The bananas don't have any in-game "value" like items from Counter-Strike or DOTA. A lot of the comments and reviews are screaming "scam," but it's not a scam. It's a cash grab, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It's just what it is. One of the developers called it an "infinite money glitch." Steam and the developers get a cut of each sale of these items. A Crypticbanana sold for $1141.39 this morning, so some players are making money.
I currently have four bananas — three common and one rare — all worth about three cents a piece. At this rate, I will not get rich off bananas. So, do I recommend Bananas? I do not, but they are no stupider than NFTs.
Previously: Do otters like bananas?
