The Banana Game May Not Be a Scam But It’s Still Not Worth Your Time

ign.com:

Quick, you only have a few seconds to answer this question: What games are on Steam’s top 10 concurrent players of all time list? PUBG, yes. Counter-Strike 2, absolutely. Elden Ring, for sure. But if you answered Banana, you would… also be correct. The bizarre indie game that consists of repeatedly clicking on a picture of a banana (and nothing else) has become a sensation, at least in sheer number of alleged players. But if you were thinking of giving it a download and checking it out for yourself, let me give you some advice: don’t bother.

Banana is not the first game of its kind; the virtually identical game Egg was released earlier this year in February, and new contender Cats showed up after Banana’s release back in April. All of these games follow the same format of mindlessly clicking on an image for no discernible reason other than to raise the click counter and to be gifted a Steam item on timed intervals. In Banana’s case, players are rewarded for their clicks with various digital bananas every three hours, many of which are common, but some of which are quite rare. Players can also outright purchase bananas from the game’s store, but the bananas available are rotated out at the developers’ discretion.

And therein lies the real purpose of Banana: to artificially generate an economy for useless digital “goods.” Now, to be clear, Banana is not technically a scam. The game is free-to-play and it doesn’t push you to monetize it if you don’t want to. You can download it, spend a few minutes satisfying your fruit-clicking urges, and then uninstall it without spending a cent. Unlike many free-to-play games that find ways to restrict or annoy players enough so they spend cash to alleviate the friction, Banana doesn’t really have any gameplay to restrict. You click and the number goes up. The number isn’t even saved across play sessions, meaning it resets every time you turn off the game. The digital bananas you receive are dropped right into your Steam account, and