The developer behind the Banana clicker game on Steam has assured fans the game is not a “scam.”
The popularity of Banana has been staggering, establishing itself as one of the 10 most-played games in Steam history, with players hoping to be lucky enough to earn one of the rare drops.
A variety of bananas in the game can then be sold on the Steam marketplace, some of which are barely worth a few cents while others sell for hundreds of dollars, leading many to question the legitimacy of the game and whether there was something sinister lurking.
But as reported by Eurogamer, co-owner aestheticspartan spoke on the matter after it emerged that one of the devs had previously been involved in a “steam market bitcoin scam/bug.”
He said the other developers “did not know about this until recent videos” and “had a take almost immediately with the whole team about the situation,” adding that “he is showing remorse” for his past actions.
The individual in question has since parted with the team, and his inventory has “been cleared of any valuable bananas” that may lead to concerns, then going on to say there is “no scamming/scam” being pushed by the developer.
While the developer has made it clear it’s not pushing a scam, the free game remains controversial due to its visible similarities with the NFT market but still attracts hundreds of thousands of players a day.
At the time of writing, Banana has over 780,000 concurrent players, placing it second behind only Counter-Strike 2 in the list of most played games per SteamDB, and recently hit a new 24-hour peak of over 884,000 players.
The popularity of Banana has seen other clicker games emerge on Steam, including Cars, Egg, and Cucumber, to varying levels of success.