Banana is one of the funniest things I've had the pleasure of reporting — it's a game that seems to have started as a joke, but rapidly soared to the high throne in the Steam Pantheon, making it the second most played game on the platform and only beaten by Counter Strike 2. It was.

This is not popular because bananas are a good game if you are not familiar with. This is popular because it offers a stress-free way to get various rarity steam items (bananas) for trade. Basically consider TF2's hats system, but in the game itself you can only click a lot of 2d images of spies. Also, you can not wear a hat. That's the banana.

However, the swollen banana community is experiencing some confusion until late (thanks, Eurogamer). If you head to Discord, which has more than 108,000 members at the time of writing, you'll see a news post declaring "No fraud/fraud has occurred" on the appropriate channel.

One of the game's developers — a user named Theselions - was involved in a supposed market manipulation scam that happened a few years ago.

According to the YouTube channel Tdm_Heyzeus, Theselions was part of a group of users who got Steam wallet rich. Its value was artificially inflated in the market (more than a picture of a useless banana, I mean). The mastermind was banned, the game was removed, and the items were banned forever.

"We didn't know about this until recent videos started to point this out, and we talked almost immediately with the entire team about the situation. We gave him the opportunity to explain the situation to us, and we know that he shows remorse and feel sorry for what has happened in the past.

Banana authorities still decided to break up with him "on good terms". However, Theselions revoked his fruit privileges as a gesture of goodwill to the community: "Lions inventory is cleared of all precious bananas," he says, "although he continues to be part of the Discord server at the time of writing,"I don't think he's doing anything that deserves to be banned." It's a good idea."

The announcement also promises that bananas will be much more than a game where you click on fruits, somehow: "We are working on an update and can't wait to turn this game into something bigger and better than just a clicker game. We have been and are still improving the game and working on a large amount of updates so that all of you can do much more with your banana"

For what it's worth, I don't think you can really call a banana a scam by any stretch of imagination. No. Speculative nonsense based on limited platforms involving real money "Yes, indeed — and potentially dangerous for those suffering from an unhealthy relationship with gambling, like all forms of capital-risk activity. But it's less so than the TF2hat ecosystem or Counter Strike loot boxes.

However, based on a recent Polygon interview with Banana dev Hery, it is clear that the team is not only feeling pressure, but also struggling with bots."The game basically doesn't spend 1% on pc resources, so people are exploiting up to 1000 alternative accounts to get a rare drop, or at least a bulk drop," he said.

As I said when the game peaked at a humble 30,000-player peak, Banana proves pretty decisively that as a "dudes rock" community, nft doesn't need blockchain to do what it was trying to do.: You just need a bit of internal system and pocket change and, potentially, a group of bot scripts and boring enthusiasts. But it is not yet known whether the entire house of Cards will collapse due to stratospheric success.