Punch Club sells 330k copies, pirated 1.6 million times

http://www.pcgamer.com/punch-club-has-sold-330000-units-but-its-been-pirated-16-million-times/

So some people seem to think that piracy is not an issue on PC anymore but this says otherwise, what say you SW??

The game is 9.99 too.

Thieves ruin it for everyone.

No hermit will answer you.

In their eyes PC gaming has no problems....therefore there aren't any problems.

@mr_huggles_dog: Some comments from other websites are hilarious: "the game has no demo so how else are we gonna try it?"

How about reviews and word of mouth?!?

People that want to buy the game will buy the game, people that don't want to buy the game won't buy the game.

@skektek: and people who really don't want to pay 9.99 but play it will pirate it.

Funny cause I bought it.

@Juub1990: them I'm happy you're part of the 330,000.

I say that people both overestimate and underestimate the effects of piracy on sales. It obviously hurts them but exactly how much? How many of these people(most from poor countries it seems) would have actually paid for the game?

Obviously it's still wrong to pirate a game you couldn't afford to get otherwise

Has there been evidence of heavy drm game suddenly selling more?

It doesn't matter. In the end you either buy the game or your don't.

Pirating an indie game is a new low. Just pirate Ubisoft, EA and other big companies and buy the indie games

Not to mention according to many people here, most of PC gamers apparently dont have rigs that are even as powerful as xbone/ps4 combine that with everyone pirating their games...

Yet according to the sales games sell well on PC, so who the hell is buying them?

It really is too bad. The game has also been pirated to death on mobile with over 500K of illegal downloads. 90% occurred on mobile.

Too bad they couldn't use Denuvo.

@skektek: so are we just gonna ignore the fact that this game is dirt cheap and it can get cheaper (1.99 on sale) by saying that?

In the long run they tend to sell more on PC. Console sales are front loaded with most games not selling at all years after they've been released. Skyrim is still a top seller on PC despite being what? 5 years old now. The Witcher 2 is still selling on PC and pretty much dead on Xbox 360. Yes, I know, it's been sold for like 3$ but that's the point. Also, many people don't buy newer games on PC because they don't have the hardware to run them. When they upgrade down the line, they can afford older games.

@unrealgunner: not even that, just don't buy their games at all.

The game was absolute balls. 330k people bought it and told their mates it was wank. Good games sell well, bad games usually do not. The game would have been pirated regardless but if it was worth buying it would have sold more and this has been proven time and time again.

I think it's a good game. What does being "balls" mean? That it's bad I guess? The reviews are also pretty good.

@pelvist: yes it was so bad it was pirated 1.6 million times right? If a game is bad you don't pirate or buy it period.

@Kruiz_Bathory: I think people should be given the freedom to buy what they want. I don't want tampons so I'm not going to buy them.

China, Russia, Brazil, these countries are famous for their tendency to pirate games, especially China.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/16/chinas-massively-illegal-world-of-warcraft-theme-park

They don't just steal games,but they even go so far to open a theme park based on World of Warcraft without blizzards' permission.

@skektek: yes and that doesn't make it ok to pirate a game or steal something you "don't want". You have freedom to buy it, not to steal it.

This game is 74 on MC and I cant for the life of me fathom why it scored even that high, Gamespot didnt even review it yet apparently its worth the effort to write about how poorly it sold (or how well it sold actually, 330k isnt bad for a game that no one heard of -depends how you choose to look at it)... The game was moderately fun for the first half hour until you realise how much of a chore the whole thing is.

So what your saying is there are potentially nearly 2 million+ fans of punch club on the pc alone!?!?! That seems pretty good to me for an indie game!

@Kruiz_Bathory: Yes so bad it was pirated 1.8m times shows that people are more willing to try something for free than pay money for something they might not like -obviously.

That is unfortunate, and I don't mean to be insensitive but there is a silver lining for me here, I'm happy to see so much interest in a 2D game, as a big fan of those kind of games.

A 2D boxing RPG, sounds cool, bring to consoles please.

@pelvist: oh please that is a ridiculous excuse, if you'd really like to play a game but aren't sure to buy it, you seek reviews, forum recommendations or simply wait for a sale, the game is less than 10usd are you gonna tell me a 1.99 sale is too much?

People actually defending other people that like to steal?

Those numbers arent counting any sales made at 1.99 though are they Simon? This game wasnt heard of until the devs did a Twitch playthough, mere hours before it released. The prospect of a decent boxing game on PC (of which there are none) would have raised interest enough for people to want to try it -except the mediocre reception from the community that did buy it and lack of attention or reviews from major websites usually amounts to low sales. In this regard 330k doesnt seem all that bad.

Never heard of it. Seems like a publicity stunt.

some people are really cheap, the friggin game is $9.99

the demo excuse is bullshit, watch a YouTube video, that's usually enough

never even heard of this game

They are called Hermits for a reason.

What's the issue here?

A no-name indie game sold 330,000 units in 2 months on PC. That sort of thing won't happen anywhere else. I guarantee piracy helped those sales. It's free advertising.

@Juub1990: does that make facts not happen?

330k copies sold for a pixel indie game... that's fucking amazing sales. I would like to see them release their game on consoles and see how they would sell a shit.

Twice the amount of Street Fighter V, which btw is non piracy game as there's nothing but online to it

@pelvist: it still doesn't justify the 1.6 million illegal downloads, are you really going to go ahead and pretend those people just wanted to "try" it?? It's exactly the same excuse movie pirates use, they wanna see it before they add it to their collection yet never buy it. You said it yourself, there was twitch gameplay isn't that enough?

Witcher 3 has no drm and can be pirated without any effort, still sold 10M copies, most of the sales are from PC. Piracy means a shit to game sales. Many game using Denuvo are still unckracked and they didn't sell a gazillion on PC, which suggests that piracy and game sales are completely unrelated.

@beardmad: you're just gonna downplay this like that? Calling an indie dev a "no-name studio" lol really and then you call it free advertising. Nice way to twist it around and defend those who pirate and hurt the whole industry.

@jhonMalcovich: piracy does mean a lot to small indie developers whose game doesn't even sell for 10usd.

There´s no such things as piratez !

Yeah, right:

see all that merchandise ? ---> pirated.

I think what he meant is that to what degree you like balls will determine how much you enjoy the game I could be wrong though?

No it does not. 10 bucks is a lot for a small pixel-art game honestly. The fact they managed to sell 330k copies of it speaks volumes of integrity of PC gamers. Nobody didn't even hear of this game until now, and most people who run their mouth loudest here wouldn't even buy it themselves for 10 bucks. Most consoles gamers wouldn't even look at it.

Where am I trying to justify illegal downloads? What part of any of "it" is justifying piracy?

Obviously the piracy bit stood out more to you because it gives you an excuse to call PC gamers pirates on an internet forum. After all, you arent going to address the question of how an unheard of indie game that isnt even that good managed to sell 330k copies in 2 months on one platform that has such a tiny install base for the type of game it is. ...no, no of course not, not when there are 1.6 million pirated copies to complain about...

@Kruiz_Bathory: people who don't want to pay 9.99 for a game and instead prefer to pirate it instead aren't going to buy it regardless.

@jhonMalcovich: that tells you that the game is good, going by steam reviews the game reception is "very good" at 80% and it does say a lot about pc gamers, giving a small indie team a chance by having sold 330k units no doubt.

@pelvist: so when you said that some wanna try it before buying doesn't count as justification?

And where have I said pc gamers are pirates?? I'm just stating that this game saw small sales compared to the times it got pirated. Is it something to complain about? Of course it is when many people call themselves the master race or that gaming is better on pc(which it is) go ahead and instead of supporting a game, good or bad(if it's bad you just don't touch it) and pirate it. I am not pointing fingers at pc gamers nor calling all of them pirates, instead, those who think that it's not a big deal can come and say why. It's just one big and bad thing about the users, not the whole community but a very big part of it.

You think all of those 1.6 million people were going to buy it regardless?

They are a no-name studio. They aren't a Nintendo, or a 2K, or a Ubisoft. It was their first game, and it's an indie game without a single bit of advertising, and it sold 330k in two months. Some big studios fail to hit that mark.

It's not about defending piracy. It's about defending the idea of making gaming as widespread as possible. It helps the industry, even if it is piracy because at the very least, someone who didn't pay for the game did at least play the game, and may find themselves on a forum online convincing total strangers to play the game because of how much fun they themselves had with it. That translates to sales.

It's akin to borrowing a game. I bet anyone in this thread can look at their life of gaming and find games they love that they discovered because they borrowed them from a friend. Same goes for peoples' favorite movies, books, tv shows, and music.

And maybe they don't share their opinion online. They still hold their own opinion of the game's value. If they like it, they will place a higher value on future products from that developer. They may even choose to go purchase the game for themselves when they get the chance to.

Closing down avenues where people can discover games is the surest way to get less people to play your game, and since word of mouth is one of the biggest contributors to game sales in the indie world, you're talking about closing down one of the biggest forms of advertising they've got.

As an aside, let's also not discount the idea that piracy is still so rampant because not every country in the world even has access to the games to begin with. It's a bit unfair to say that every pirate is stealing games when there are billions of people in the world who can't even access Steam to buy the game.