BKFC is putting its brand inside a video game. The promotion announced an official partnership with Thiefcatcher Games for Blood & Canvas: Bareknuckle Boxing, which launches November 4 on PC through Steam, and the bigger payoff is still to come: real BKFC fighters and the promotion’s Squared Circle are slated for the game’s first major update.
At launch, the BKFC presence is mostly atmosphere. Players building a career will see official BKFC banners on the walls of their in-game gyms, and select real-world BKFC fights will play on the gym TVs, according to the promotion’s announcement.
The headline feature comes later. BKFC says the first major update will let players fight as or against real BKFC fighters inside the Squared Circle. No date has been announced for that update, and no fighters have been named.
What Blood & Canvas Is
Thiefcatcher Games is a six-person studio of former AAA developers, founded in 2025. Built in Unreal Engine 5, Blood & Canvas is a single-player game set in the late-1990s underground fight scene. It sells for $24.99 on Steam, the Epic Games Store and Itch.io, with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions planned for 2027.
Players start out in a rundown gym and work through three underground circuits, including a tavern basement and a 3 AM diner parking lot, before earning a spot in the professional ranks. In the game’s September reveal, that pro tier was a fictional 20-fighter league called the Bareknuckle Violence Organization.
There are no judges and no decisions, so every fight ends with someone on the canvas. Damage is permanent and builds across a career, and absorbing too much punishment can force an early retirement. Winnings go toward training, gym upgrades and medical treatment, and the game’s Steam page notes it includes mature themes involving performance-enhancing drugs. The studio bills it as the first game built entirely around bareknuckle boxing.
Two Years After McGregor’s Tease
A BKFC video game has been in the conversation for two years. Part-owner Conor McGregor posted on X in October 2024 that he was “currently working on a @bareknucklefc video game,” promising bare-knuckle impact sounds never before heard in a game.
BKFC’s announcement does not mention McGregor or say whether this partnership is connected to the project he teased. Either way, it’s the latest swing at a wider audience for a promotion whose own fighters, like ex-WWE star Gzim Selmani, have predicted BKFC will become bigger than the UFC and WWE.
