It seems Egg and it's copy Banana have potentially started off another trend on Steam, with games designed for you to farm items to sell on the Steam Market.
Banana continues to explode in "player" counts on Steam, with it hitting an all-time peak of 834,343 only 24 hours ago. Of course, most of those are likely bots and people with multiple Steam accounts trying their luck. Meanwhile, Cats has managed a peak count of 48,668 in the last 24 hours.
Cats released on May 21st and it's using the same basic idea. Give you something super simple, that you can click a few times and run in the background and over time you get special item drops into your Steam Inventory. These items include various styles of cats, sushi and more.
As you can see opening for a few minutes, clicking a few times and it dropped me a few items:
That one selected above as you can see, has been sold almost 100,000 times on the Steam Market. It's completely ridiculous. People are leaning into these like the NFT craze, only with less of the blockchain scam silliness. Here it's just as dumb though, but it's also a seemingly super-simple way for a developer to earn money when they get a % cut (I believe it's 10%) of all Steam Market item sales (Valve get a cut too). So if a developer can hook enough people in (or bots…) it's probably a reasonable amount going into their pocket.
Expect others of this type to come as more developers figure it out. We're likely to see quite a few low-effort attempts, and I imagine we'll gradually see them expand to pull in more people with a couple extra hooks. We've had the explosion of survivor-like bullet heaven games (thanks Vampire Survivors), now we're getting Egg-likes? Just like Vampire Survivors, they're not the first to do them, but they do seem to be the first few to really make it big.
You can find Cats on Steam. It runs with Proton 9, not that I suggest you try it, I just like to cover the absurd things that happen on Steam at times.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
thelimeydragon Jun 17
Edit: I don't know how much "low effort" you can get than Banana.
Last edited by thelimeydragon on 17 June 2024 at 10:37 am UTC
thelimeydragon Jun 17
QuoteSo if a developer can hook enough people in (or bots…) it's probably a reasonable amount going into their pocket.This video about Banana by the excellent Jauwn (who usually covers scammy cryptocurrency/NFT "games") has a good run-down on this. I highly recommend checking it out if you have a spare 17 minutes and 18 seconds.
Quoting: GuestIt's quite embarrassing seeing this type of crap climbing top 10, as well as the explosion in market items.It makes me sad to see that actual games with actual effort put into them, that I've personally thoroughly enjoyed, are not doing numbers anywhere near this stuff and might not see any follow-ups as a result.
What times we live in, when this is what gets rewarded...
Quoting: PenglingQuoteSo if a developer can hook enough people in (or bots…) it's probably a reasonable amount going into their pocket.This video about Banana by the excellent Jauwn (who usually covers scammy cryptocurrency/NFT "games") has a good run-down on this. I highly recommend checking it out if you have a spare 17 minutes and 18 seconds.
Quoting: GuestIt's quite embarrassing seeing this type of crap climbing top 10, as well as the explosion in market items.It makes me sad to see that actual games with actual effort put into them, that I've personally thoroughly enjoyed, are not doing numbers anywhere near this stuff and might not see any follow-ups as a result.
Thanks for posting the link to the video and after watching it, I can sense Valve will eventually step in and intervene because this is terrible and a waste of time to majority of gamers that would rather play real games. Banana would be the last thing I'd call as a "game" and I wouldn't shed a tear once it gets removed from Steam.
Quoting: ToddLThanks for posting the link to the video and after watching it, I can sense Valve will eventually step in and intervene because this is terrible and a waste of time to majority of gamers that would rather play real games. Banana would be the last thing I'd call as a "game" and I wouldn't shed a tear once it gets removed from Steam.I suspect that the alleged ban-dodging will bring about that removal on its own!
Glad to share a good video, by the way.
Incidentally, The Spiffing Brit covered it, too, and that was an interesting watch as well.Last edited by Pengling on 17 June 2024 at 1:56 pm UTC
Quoting: PenglingI watched that (at your recommendation). It was spiffing!Quoting: ToddLThanks for posting the link to the video and after watching it, I can sense Valve will eventually step in and intervene because this is terrible and a waste of time to majority of gamers that would rather play real games. Banana would be the last thing I'd call as a "game" and I wouldn't shed a tear once it gets removed from Steam.I suspect that the alleged ban-dodging will bring about that removal on its own!
Glad to share a good video, by the way.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 17 June 2024 at 5:49 pm UTC
Last edited by pilk on 17 June 2024 at 6:28 pm UTC
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI watched that (at your recommendation). It was spiffing!I love his videos about exploits in games - they're always hilarious. Do make sure to dig into his channel some more if you liked that one!
This Spore one was especially funny!Last edited by Pengling on 18 June 2024 at 1:25 am UTC
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