My "Enter the secret code" method is printing out the wrong output

I currently have a game where the user needs to type in the secret code correctly to play the game. However, each time I type in "game" as the user code, it prints out Goodbye!, rather than play the game. Can someone explain why?

   public static void secretCode() {
      System.out.println("Enter your secret code to play: ");
      Scanner passwordInput = new Scanner(System.in);
      String userCode = passwordInput.nextLine();
      String gameCode = "game";

    if (userCode == gameCode) {
        System.out.println("Let's begin! Each game costs $50 to play.");
        playGame();
        System.out.println("Thanks for playing. Goodbye!");
    }
    if (userCode != gameCode) {
        System.out.println("Goodbye!");
    }

}