The developers of Banana, a banana clicking game that has overtaken Baldur’s Gate 3 and Hogwarts Legacy as Steam’s most popular games of all time, have insisted it is not a scam.
A Discord post from one of the three developers mentioned and co-owner of Banana, aestheticspartan, stated that the team had parted ways with one of its members after it emerged that they were accused of previously being involved in a Steam scam . This team member has denied any involvement in a scam and says an influx of money obtained through the Steam marketplace was the result of a bug.
Despite their involvement, “there is no fraud or fraud,” aestheticspartan emphasizes. Banana’s gameplay literally consists of repeatedly clicking a banana, but the main draw is dropping Steam items that can be sold on the official marketplace. Banana hands out various bananas as items, and by clicking on the game occasionally, players will receive a few per day.
Most of these items are offered for just a few cents each, meaning Banana players often spend and earn very little at a time, but this likely doesn’t matter to Steam owner Valve or the development team.
That’s because both get a cut of every sale on the market. Valve takes 5%, up to a minimum of $0.01, and the developer takes another small percentage, the exact total of which is unclear in this case, but likely follows the same conventions as Valve up to a minimum of $0.01.
Buyers and sellers don’t see the same numbers on Steam’s community marketplace because the seller chooses the amount and the buyer sees the total of that number plus fees. This would explain why there is no banana item available for less than $0.03. They’re probably at $0.01, but another $0.01 for Valve and $0.01 for the developer adds up to a total of $0.03.
However, these little numbers do add up. Using the simplest example, the simple Banana item (compared to the banana that looks like a Panda or some other obscure design), we can see how much the developer and Valve are potentially making from Banana.
Steam itself provides an hour-by-hour breakdown of how many of these items have been sold. Using the last all-day example, June 18, 2024, an eye-watering total of 1,993,669 of this one item was sold.
Valve therefore potentially earned a total of $19,936.69 from the sale of this single Banana over a 24-hour period, an amount most likely also earned by the developer. This standard edition is one of 81 items sold on Banana’s community marketplace.
However, this is the most common item and is therefore sold in larger quantities than other items. For example, the Rainbow Banana currently sells for about $0.75, but generally sells for less than 50 per hour instead of the thousands of more common bananas. The most expensive item, the Crypticnana, of which only 25 exist, has been sold four times since June 17 for a value of more than $1,000.
While this is a colossal price compared to the most basic banana for buyer and seller, Valve’s 5% means it only nets $50 per $1,000 sold. It is therefore the $0.01 minimum policy that affects large amounts of poorly sold items that makes Valve and the developer the most money. There are a total of 14 items listed for a minimum amount of $0.03, and each item sells thousands per hour.
Developer aestheticspartan’s insistence that Banana isn’t a scam is therefore probably legitimate, but it almost certainly earns the development team tens of thousands of dollars a day, if not more. As for why it’s so popular, developer team member Hery told Polygon Banana that it’s a real-life “infinite money glitch.” “I really believe the reason it caught on more than anything is because it’s a legally infinite money problem,” Hery said. “Users make money playing a free game while selling free virtual items.”
They also admitted that Banana had a bot problem early on, with only about a third of all participants being real players. Whether that figure has changed since Banana’s explosion remains to be seen, although Hery said the development team has reached out to Valve for help with the issue.
Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance reporter for IGN. He talks about The Witcher all day.