Punch Club was pirated five times more than it was purchased, dev reveals

Lazy Bear Games’ boxing management title Punch Club has suffered heavy blows at the hands of pirates.

The title launched in January following a unique release strategy that locked access behind a Twitch stream. The PC and mobile game would only be made publically available once viewers completed the audience-controlled playthrough.

10 days after it landed in marketplaces, Lazy Bear announced that Punch Club had sold more than 100,000 copies and generated over $1 million in revenue.

However, just over two months on, the game’s momentum has slowed – at least in terms of legitimate purchases.

Lazy Bear revealed that 300,000 units have now been purchased across PC, iOS and Android.

That statistic is impressive, but pales in comparison to the number of times the game has been pirated.

Punch Club has been illegally downloaded more than 1.6 million times, with 1.1 million copies being stolen on PC, Mac and Linux and 514,000 units being pinched on mobile.

Out of the mobile platforms, Android is by far the more prominent environment for pirates, with 90 per cent of the illegal downloads registered, versus just 10 per cent on iOS.

PC comprised the majority of illegal downloads, accounting for 69 per cent of the piracy split versus mobile’s 31 per cent.

Despite this, PC also contributed approximately the same proportion of revenue – 73 per cent – compared to mobile’s 27 per cent.

Globally, Brazil was found to be the top market for piracy, accounting for 43 per cent of all illegal copies. Russia was second, with almost a fifth (18 per cent). China followed up third with just over 15 per cent.

Conversely, Germany served as the moral high ground of the global market, with German players making up 46 per cent of all people who opted to buy Punch Club rather than downloading it illegally.