A clicker game on Steam has recently become the talk of the town after releasing some of the platform’s most popular games. ‘Banana’ became a sensation for its NFT-like rewards, which can sell for over $1,000 on the Steam marketplace. However, the clicker phenomenon has sparked a debate among members of the crypto community about the state of crypto and web3 gaming.
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Peeling Back the Steam Clicker Game Feel
Banana is an indie game on Steam that involves clicking on the image of a banana to get rewards. Although not the first of its kind, its players are rewarded with digital bananas every few hours. Rewards can range from common bananas worth pennies to rare bananas that can sell for up to $1,300.
The free-to-play game made headlines after overtaking some of the platform’s most popular titles. Banana surpassed Elder Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3 on the list of most-played games. The clicker game was second only to Counter-Strike 2.
At the time of writing, the game remains the fourth most played game on Steam, with over 344,000 current players and a peak of 578,000 in the last 24 hours. Additionally, it reached an all-time high of 917,000 players earlier this month.
![NFTs and Crypto Games: Steam Banana Opens Debate 1 cryptography](https://thegurumedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/IMG_3628.jpg)
However, the game’s simplicity raised some alarms among players. Many believed the clicker game contained malware that turned devices into crypto miners. While others wondered if the game was a fraud Of the type.
One of Banana’s developers, Hery, denied the allegations. Hery told media outlet Polygon that “it’s pretty much a stupid game” with bananas, not a scam.
Many users also speculated whether the game was related to NFTs and cryptocurrencies, as it had a similar feel to NFTs but without the blockchain technology. A member of the Banana team clarified that “Banana wants nothing to do with crypto.”
They explained that the game had no intention of integrating encryption, as it does not “mix well” with Steam. Furthermore, they emphasized that it all started as “a silly game to collect some bananas on your Steam profile.”
Are Crypto and Web3 games going bananas?
While Banana has no plans to integrate into the crypto industry, the game has sparked a lot of conversations within the community. Several members took the opportunity to discuss its implications for web3 gaming.
One user highlighted the game’s popularity despite its simple mechanics, proposing that the industry doesn’t need “AAA games” to make it big. Several community members agreed and suggested There is a misconception about the type of games needed in web3.
While complex, puzzle-solving games are often thought to be the only option, “guys just want to have fun and earn points,” said one user X. Apparently, the feeling among many was that the industry is “making everything more complicated than it is.”
Some users to believe that Banana and similar games could help with web3 games. O meme quality of the game was touted as a potential catalyst for wider adoption.
Similarly, this week, Avalanche Gaming discussed the implications of Banana on its Gamified Show. According to Paul Bettner, game developer and co-founder of Playful Studios, Banana could be a breakout into the wider world of crypto gaming.
For Bettner, “the behavior that we all love and participate in on the web3 as degens and web3 and crypto-native users is, in fact, universal.” As he observes the evolution of the Steam clicker sensation phenomenon, the game developer got that that the users were “a bunch of degens who don’t yet know they are degens.”
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Ultimately, he believes, “people are learning to degenerate.” If most of these users knew “what a wallet or blockchain is, they would realize they could do this at a scale 1,000 times larger than a blockchain.”
![NFTs and Crypto Games: Steam Banana Opens Debate 2 Encryption, TOTAL](https://thegurumedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/TOTAL_2024-06-28_08-17-35.png)
Featured image from Unsplash.com, chart from TradingView.com