In the first left pie chart, PC is red and mobile blue, on the right PC is blue and mobile is red. *Arrrg*

1, How did they track?
2, They sold ~ 175k copies on steam, Steamspy says: Owners: 173,160 ± 9,711
3, Pcgamer article says most pirates come from Brazil, China and Russia. I'm not surprised, the life worse there than in my country :P

300,001. I just bought it. Didn't have anything to do with this thread, just was the lowest amount of money + the highest on my wishlist, at the time.

Wow, all those sales, and I have never even heard of the game. TBH it looks a bit crap anyways, so it just goes to show that pirates will download anything I suppose. I vote to leave them with their spyware infected garbage and graphs showing how many "nosales" they think they have had...its for the best.

I mean, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all. But, as you nailed it, pixel/retro graphics (albeit of the nicer variety) was used for this game. So, that particular part of the budget couldn't have been higher than someone using high-quality 2-D, isometric or even decent 3-D. Now this is a very personal opinion, but I find it upsetting that indie developers who strive a good middle line between attractive graphical design (that doesn't need a computer of the future, like Triple AAAs) and gameplay, aren't rewarded with the same kind of sales Punch Club is seeing.

I'm in agreement with you. And don't they have privacy laws against this in certain European countries?

Despite being somewhat overdone, I guess many people still like the "retro pixel look". When combined with the low production costs, it's not surprising so many devs go for that style. Style aside, Punch Club is probably a decent game, if they managed to sell so many copies.

But whether or not this is just a publicity stunt, it ultimately makes me feel less inclined to give any money to this developer.

all (good) games get pirated, be them indie, aaaas, drmed or alien made.

You consent to most things by clicking through the ToS or EULA.

It's way funnier when there's a GOG version and they proceed to crack and upload the Steam version.

These ToSes or EULAs always talk about how they can terminate your license if you were caught pirating and whatnot, though I didn't hear a case of that unless the game or software in question is always online, or it's a beta test and it's easy to find out who caused the piracy outrage (I'm thinking Modern Combat 5 on iOS).

But for pirated copies, most outright ditch the EULA for a "If you like this game, BUY IT!" message. Well, it's not always that I pirate a game in order to demo it and then decide to buy it or not, you see...

Depends on what the motivation is, upload a full game or prove you can crack a protection scheme. Scene Releases rarely care about DRM-Free games, though that may have changed in recent years. They cracked a game for bragging rights, not to upload the game itself.

And then be like "hey, DRM-free equals piracy!"
Pirates want a challenge, they're done and proved in that area. Uploading the GOG version is just not challenging or tasty enough.

Pretty sure both ToS and EULA can easily be overriden if they go against the law. (So far none have really been brought to court to set a clear precedent, that's all).

but how important is that really anyway?

these days do you really prove anything going after a game like that?

to prove something you'd go after something more relevant, like the AAA stuff. but if so, perhaps this is why the developers let patches lag for gog.

So, can someone who owns the game here see if it's calling home?