The developers of Banana, the banana-clicking game that has usurped Baldur’s Gate 3 and Hogwarts Legacy on Steam’s all-time most popular games list, have insisted it is not a hoax.
A Discord post by one of the three listed developers and Banana co-owner, estheticspartan, stated that the team had parted ways with one of its members after it emerged that they had previously been accused of participating in a Steam scam. This team member denied any involvement in the scam, saying instead that the influx of money obtained through the Steam marketplace was the result of a mistake.
Despite their involvement, “there is no deception or fraud going on,” the aesthetic partner insisted. The Banana game literally involves repeatedly clicking a banana, but its main attraction is dropping items from Steam that can be sold on the official market. The banana gives out different bananas as its item and clicking the game once in a while will earn the player a pair per day.
Most of these items are listed for pennies, meaning Banana players often spend and earn very little at a time, but that probably doesn’t matter to Steam owner Valve or the development team.
That’s because they both get a cut of every sale on the marketplace. Valve takes 5%, a minimum of $0.01, and the developer takes another small percentage, the exact amount of which is unclear in this case, but probably follows the same conventions as Valve, a minimum of $0.01.
Buyers and sellers don’t see the same numbers on the Steam Community Market because the seller picks the amount and the buyer sees the total plus fees. This would explain why no banana item is available for less than $0.03 – they’re probably listed at $0.01, but the additional $0.01 for Valve and $0.01 for the developer add up to $0.03.
However, these small numbers add up. In the most basic example, a simple Banana object (compared to a banana that looks like a Panda or any other obscure design), we can see how much the developer and Valve potentially make from Banana.
Steam itself has an hourly breakdown of how many of these items have been sold. Using the last full-day example, June 18, 2024, a total of 1,993,669 units of this single item were sold.
Therefore, Valve potentially made a total of $19,936.69 from the sale of this single Banana in 24 hours, a number that the developer more than likely made as well. This standard drop is one of 81 items sold on the Banana Community Market.
However, this is the most common item, so it sells in larger quantities than other items. The Rainbow Banana, for example, is currently listed at around $0.75, but generally sells for less than 50 per hour instead of the thousands of most common bananas. The most expensive item, Crypticnana, of which only 25 exist, has sold for more than $1,000 four times since June 17.
While this is a colossal price compared to the most basic banana for the buyer and seller, Valve’s 5% means that for every $1,000 sold, they only pay $50 for them. Therefore, it’s the $0.01 minimum policy that affects a large number of low-selling items that makes Valve and developers the most money. A total of 14 items are listed at a minimum amount of $0.03 and each sells thousands per hour.
Developer aestheticspartan Banana’s tenure is not a scam so it’s probably legit, but it’s also almost certainly making the development team tens of thousands of dollars a day, if not more. As for why it’s so popular, a member of the Hera development team said that Polygon Banana is a true “infinite money bug”. “I believe the reason it’s mostly caught on is because it’s a legal infinite money loophole,” Hery said. “Users earn money from the free game by selling free virtual items.”
They also admitted that Banana had a bot problem in the beginning, with only about one third of all concurrent players being real players. Whether that number has changed since Banana exploded remains to be seen, though Hery said the development team has contacted Valve for help with the issue.
Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance reporter for IGN. He’ll be talking about The Witcher all day.