Is One of the Most Played Steam Games A Scam? | Cold Take

This week Frost chows down on the a-peel of 'Banana'. Is it harmless potassium or a vile new storefront for banana-scammas?

[mightytoast]

So we have officially found out just how little game you can get away with if you attach a skin market to it.

[Rubberman]

Never heard of this "Banana" game, so at first I thought it was silly nonsense game and thought "what's the harm in this?" Then Frost started talking about getting a banana out of it and selling the banana with all the talk of scarcity and speculation, and I thought "this is starting to sound like shit with NFTs" and then it clicked for me why people are hating on this.

[Seydaschu]

"Companies taking advantage of idiots is fine, because it only hurts idiots."
As someone who isn't Omniscient, I'll never defend this stance.

[BortTheBeaver]

There is a reason to be more sceptical. A YouTuber by the name of Jauwn did a deep dive into this game and the developers. The developers of this game are very closely related to another similar game that got one of the developers banned for running a pump-and-dump scheme. This game worked the EXACT same way as Banana does. Steer clear of this game.

[nintenster]

This is nothing new, just the logical extreme.

This thing has existed on steam for as long as tradeable items and trading cards have existed. Asset flips take advantage of this too.

The 1/3 cut devs get off any cards/items traded in the market, combined with the absolute massive size and speed of the steam market with bots means devs get a lot of nickles and dimes for little effort. This is just 0 effort, with a lot of nickles and dimes and some special sauce in "rare items"

Tf2 went free because the cut steam gets off its market place is to much to hinder with a small price tag.

[BrownP]

Frost: "What makes you part with money on a regular basis that others would consider wasteful? Video games? Funko pops? MTG cards?"
Me: *_"Pleasure food."_*

[HyRin]

Place your bets on how fast Frost’s hundred dollar banana is gonna get bought

[Raida]

"Hundred dollar icy nana"

Really just want to hear Frost read out all the nanas now

[connormccarthy]

The worst part is that there's no way to talk about this garbage without helping it. You improved the market for these things the moment you posted the video, so did every other content creator who's talked about it. It's the nature of meme culture, some poor idiot fan is gonna buy your $100 banana, then they're gonna sell it for even more money to an even bigger idiot as "Frost's banana", and so on and so forth. It's sad.

[billveusay]

When I was like 8 I thought "hey, what if I took this rock and said "hey, if you buy this rock from me for 1 euro, then you can resell it for 2 euros by saying to the next person that they can resell it for 3 euros". And even 8 year old me knew that this thought was silly.

_Why are we living in the universe where my silly childish thoughts shape the world economy, and not the one my silly childish thoughts mean you can fly by jumping off a coffee table and quickly jump again in mid-air ?_

[MidnightMagpie]

Radiohead said it best "You do it to yourself. Badowdow and that's what really hurts."-Yahtzee Crowshaw

[davidharrison]

Let's make a Second Wind game with Gamer Cowboy paper dolls where you click on a table horse to ward off Puritans.

[ChronoShadow]

"There is a balance to be found somewhere between Cowboys and Puritans." Nicely put

[AbbreviatedReviews]

I noticed this just browsing steamcharts and went down the rabbit hole discovering just how pointless it is. I assume it'll be one of those things that is gone in a month or two, but just like NFTs, no one wants to miss the boat on the next get rich quick scheme. Even if "rich" isn't quite enough to make a vending machine spit out a bag of chips.

[SeLeevi]

It is a trap game, made by The Big Mice (not Disney) in order for players to ruin their mice so that they need to buy new ones.

[arandomnamegoeshere]

Love the art put in to this presentation. Dislike the take. Not because I'm a Puritan cowboy. But rather because I've seen the damage scams do. Just because we don't understand the angle, doesn't mean an angle isn't there. Sure. Nobody HAS to fall in with a con game - the mark is often a willing participant. That doesn't mean a con isn't a con. It's just one aspect of how a scammer uses our innate instincts against us. A con will present itself as an opportunity rather than what it is - a scheme to bilk a mark. Someone is going to be left holding the bag.

The more interesting thing here is what Steam can do about it. Not whether they SHOULD do something - a market loses trust if it becomes a haven for cons. But Steam has created the current system as it is - allowing this scam to run. To get a cut of the more shady business models of the game industry. And now Steam has nobody to blame but themselves.

[SurrealLeaf]

Its all "fun and non-games" and "they never hurt anyone" until steam becomes yet another google playstore and your frontpage is filled with "[Name of a thing]" clicker games.
At least on this you technically could say it doesnt prey on peoples addictive personalities and need to gamble cos no one is buying those 100 dollar bananas. Yet.

[YouWinAFREEiPOD]

Either people are really desperate to work below minimum wage with no benefit, or it's money laundering.

[TheClassyGamesman]

There's always money in the banana stand.

[tommyVCE]

while it's not a scam and doesn't seem to technically be violating any ToS (and valve doesn't seem to be taking any action), this looks like it's opening up floodgates. there's already a dozen other copies and I expect more developers to follow suit and add steam community market items for the free hype/income. also the fact the dev is allowed to generate an infinite amount of super rare bananas just rubs me the wrong way - but that's just me I guess