Game intel
Borderlands 4
See if you have what it takes to go down in history as a legendary Vault Hunter as you search for secret alien treasure, blasting everything in sight.
This caught my attention because Randy Pitchford planted a public flag before launch: Borderlands 4 “would not be on sale for a long time.” One month later, it’s already 20% off on Steam – €55.99 instead of €69.99. Gamers were always going to remember that quote, and the internet did what it does: screenshot, archive, clown. Beyond the memes, the discount is a real signal that the game isn’t hitting internal targets and 2K/Gearbox want to juice momentum fast.
Price drops aren’t inherently scandalous. Modern AAA games hit 10-20% discounts by month three or around seasonal sales. But shaving a fifth off the sticker price barely a month after launch – and right after declaring the opposite – is unusual and invites questions. The sale is currently on Steam; there’s no broad matching discount on every platform as of this writing, which makes this look like a targeted PC push to convert the wishlists that didn’t turn into day-one buys.
If you’re a PC player who sat out launch, this is exactly the kind of nudge publishers rely on: the “Alright, fine, I’ll bite” moment. For day-one buyers who backed Pitchford’s statement, it’s saltier. Early adopters usually accept paying a premium for enthusiasm; they don’t expect the “long time” to be four weeks.
Borderlands is one of the few looter-shooter brands with genuine mainstream pull. Borderlands 3 exploded out of the gate in 2019; Borderlands 4, by comparison, reportedly moved about 2.5 million in its first 10 days — roughly half its predecessor’s pace. That’s not a disaster, but it’s a miss for a flagship sequel that should be compounding, not contracting.
Why the softer start? A few suspects: franchise fatigue after a decade of “more guns, more jokes,” the broader looter-shooter hangover where early spike → quick churn is the norm, and criticism that Borderlands 4’s move to an open world didn’t meaningfully elevate the loop. The art direction shift to a “cartoon realistic” style and a more mature tone is interesting — I actually like the look — but that doesn’t matter if the progression treadmill and endgame don’t keep squads coming back.
Word of mouth lives and dies on performance, and this launch stumbled in places. On PS5, some zones reportedly dipped to a slideshow — near 1 FPS — which flatly contradicts the pre-release promise of a “buttery smooth” experience. On PC, optimization complaints and stability hiccups didn’t help, especially for a game that wants you grinding for hours with friends.
There’s a good game fighting to get out. The shooting still feels punchy, loot fountains are generous, four-player co-op is a blast when everything clicks, and the RPG layering remains addictive. Reviews have often landed around the 7/10 mark — one major French outlet gave it 14/20 — praising the ambition but calling out a familiar set of issues: a conventional open world that leans repetitive, a bestiary that lacks variety, basic enemy AI, and an endgame that hasn’t proven its staying power yet. That combination screams “six more months of polish” to me.
If you’re here for the Borderlands loop — min-maxing builds, swimming in legendaries, laughing with friends — the 20% discount makes the value prop a lot easier to swallow. Just go in knowing you’ll hit some rough edges and a late-game that may run out of steam faster than you’d like.
If you wanted a series reinvention, sit tight. Wait for patches that fix PS5 performance, shore up PC optimization, and ideally expand endgame activities. Gearbox historically supports Borderlands with chunky post-launch content; if 2K wants to reverse the narrative, they’ll need a rapid cadence of hotfixes and a clear roadmap that actually deepens the loop instead of just adding louder guns.
Post-acquisition, Gearbox sits under Take-Two’s 2K label, and 2K has never been shy about tactical pricing to keep charts warm. A quick Steam discount can pull wishlisters off the fence, bump concurrent player counts, and set a friend-to-friend contagion effect in co-op games. It also resets the conversation: instead of “shaky launch,” the discourse becomes “hey, it’s cheaper now and runs better after patches,” assuming those patches arrive quickly.
I’m rooting for Borderlands 4 to find its footing because the genre needs a dependable co-op grind that isn’t a live-service treadmill. The bones are there. Fix the performance, mix up the enemy types, sharpen the AI, and drop a meaty endgame activity that isn’t just another arena loop. If Gearbox hits those beats and communicates clearly, this early discount could be a footnote rather than the headline.
Borderlands 4’s “surprise” 20% off on Steam one month in undercuts the pre-launch promise and signals softer-than-hoped sales plus launch issues. The core looter-shooter fun survives, but performance woes and a thin endgame make a wait-and-see approach sensible unless you’re a diehard vault hunter squad ready to dive in now.
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