Borderlands 4‘s launch has been off to a rocky start, with players raising issues with the game’s poor performance, particularly on PC. Right now, Borderlands 4 has a “Mixed” rating on Steam, which is certainly not good for a brand-new AAA game in a long-running franchise like this one. Steam users are detailing freezing, crashes, and optimization issues on their PC rigs, unfortunately dominating the conversation around the game over the weekend.
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Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford ended up chiming in on the discussion and pushed back against these criticisms in a series of X posts, asserting that performance issues only affect a minority of players and demanding that PC gamers “accept the reality” that some aged machines aren’t cut out for a “premium game” like Borderlands 4.
Starting on Friday, Pitchford turned up the offensive against players experiencing performance issues with the game, sarcastically mocking one commenter who expressed concerns.
“Code your own engine and show us how it’s done, please. We will be your customer when you pull it off,” wrote Pitchford. “The people doing it now are clearly dumb and don’t know what they’re doing and all the support and recommendations and code and architecture from the world’s greatest hardware companies and tech companies working with the world’s greatest real-time graphics engine coders don’t know what you seem to know. /sarcasm”
In other X posts, Pitchford laid out a case that some issues with the game stemmed from players trying to run max settings on outdated hardware, with Pitchford’s recent post emphasizing that PC players needed to accept a reality regarding the relationship between hardware and software.
While it certainly is a unique strategy to take to the internet in the wake of your game’s release to fight your own players online, I’m not sure what it accomplishes. While some of Pitchford’s posts during this time included helpful suggestions for players to improve performance, those were vastly overshadowed by the criticism he flung at players and a lack of proper acknowledgement that the game had issues.
Players who are unhappy with their purchase aren’t likely to be won over by such tactics, and Pitchford risks inflaming the player base even more with his incendiary comments. Pitchford cited in one X post that customer service reports for Borderlands 4 only affected 1% of installs, with only a minor percentage of those reporting issues with PC performance. However, it’s unlikely that these customer reports capture the full extent of the problem. Many customers don’t bother filing such reports even while having significant issues, as they don’t feel it’s worth the effort.
Contrary to these complaints, Borderlands 4 has a good Metacritic score for PC, achieving a “Generally Favorable” rating, while the audience score is significantly lower. Borderlands 4 aimed to address previous problems with Borderlands 3, like its platform exclusivity. To me, the game has solid potential if it addresses some of its flaws. Hopefully, the team behind the game has a different attitude than Pitchford and is working to improve the experience for players behind the scenes. Since its release, Gearbox has already expressed willingness to listen to player feedback around certain Borderlands 4 game features, giving me hope for the future.
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm.
