“Banana,” a new clicker game on Steam, has become more famous than some of the platform’s most beloved games. This independent game gives players digital bananas that can be sold on Steam’s marketplace for more than $1,000. This has led to a heated debate in the crypto community about the future of crypto and web3 gaming.
“Banana” is an easy but fun game where you click on a banana picture to get different rewards. Every prize is different, from common bananas that are worth only pennies to rare bananas that can fetch up to $1,300. Even though it’s very simple, the game has become very popular, beating out big games like Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3 to become the second most-played game on Steam, after Counter-Strike 2.
Crypto’s Debate On Web3
Right now, “Banana” is the fourth most played game on Steam, with more than 344,000 people right now and a high point of 578,000 in the last 24 hours. The most players ever were 917,000 at the beginning of this month.
But some players are worried about how simple the game’s mechanics are. Some think the game might have malware in it that turns devices into crypto miners, while others wonder if it’s all a scam. Hery, one of the game’s makers, responded to these claims by telling Polygon that “it is pretty much a stupid game” about bananas and not a scam.
People also thought that the game might have something to do with NFTs and cryptocurrencies because its awards were like NFTs. But a “Banana” team member made it clear that the game has no plans to use blockchain technology because it doesn’t work with Steam’s platform. They made it clear that “Banana” began as a fun project to gather bananas on Steam accounts.
Even though “Banana” has nothing to do with crypto, it has started a lot of conversations about what it means for web3 games. Some people in the community say that the game’s success shows that web3 gaming doesn’t have to have complicated, expensive games to do well. Someone on X said, “Dudes just wanna have fun and make points,” which made it sound like the gaming business might be making web3 too hard to understand.
The meme-like quality of “Banana” has been pointed out as a possible reason for more people to start playing web3 games. Paul Bettner, co-founder of Playful Studios, recently talked about “Banana” as a way to get into the bigger world of crypto gaming on Avalanche Gaming’s Gamified Show. Bettner thinks that a lot of players, even ones who aren’t familiar with blockchain technology, act in ways that are popular in the web3 space and could easily make the switch to crypto gaming.
Finally, “Banana” doesn’t have any crypto features yet, but it has had a big effect on the gaming community, starting a talk about the future of web3 gaming and how to make it more accessible to more people.
