Serious passions continue to simmer at the impromptu banana market, built around a seemingly simple game
In April 2024, the free-to-play project Banana was presented on Steam. This is a banal clicker, but over time tens of thousands of players began to play it.
Over the weekend, Banana's online peak surpassed 815 thousand players, allowing it to overtake long-running hit Dota 2 (its peak was just over 798 thousand on Sunday). The secret to the success of this game is quite simple – it is connected to the Steam trading platform and there is a “smell of earning potential” in the air. For some members of the Steam community, this is something like the local equivalent of cryptocurrency or skins in Counter-Strike 2 – these skins are considered valuable assets.
With the growing popularity (not least due to farming bots), a huge number of skins began to arrive on the Banana market – hundreds of thousands or more. Naturally, with such an increase in supply, prices for some positions collapsed and players began to complain that the “bubble had burst.”
For example, one user regrets the delay: “I should have sold 2 days ago when prices increased 10 times, but I kept thinking they would continue to rise, yeah **** ** there. I could have stolen 70 rubles and got 7.”
Some people are not discouraged: they believe in the market, or even try to build a business scheme around the game – they offer players to complete “easy tasks” , and as a reward they promise free skins.
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Cover author: Midjourney. Image source: midjourney.com